MODERN  ESSAYS 
FOR  SCHOOLS 


selecteO  by 
CHRISTOPHER   MORLEY 


m 


NEW    YORK 

HARCOURT,    BRACE  AND   COMPANY 


^DUCA-nON  DEPT. 

COPYRIGHT,    I92I,   BY 
HARCOURT,    BRACE    AND   COMPANY,   INC. 


PRINTED    IN    THC    U.  S.  A.  BY 

THB   OUINN    a    BOOKN    COMPANY 

RAHWAY,    N.    J. 


PREFACE 

It  had  been  my  habit,  I  am  now  aware,  to  speak 
somewhat  lightly  of  the  labors  of  anthologists:  to 
insinuate  that  they  led  lives  of  bland  sedentary  ease. 
I  shall  not  do  so  again.  When  the  publisher  suggested 
a  collection  of  representative  contemporary  essays,  I 
thought  it  would  be  the  most  lenient  of  tasks.  But 
experience  is  a  fine  aperitive  to  the  mind. 

Indeed  the  pangs  of  the  anthologist,  if  he  has  con- 
science, are  burdensome.  There  are  so  many  consid- 
erations to  be  tenderly  weighed;  personal  taste  must 
sometimes  be  set  aside  in  view  of  the  general  plan; 
for  every  item  chosen  half  a  dozen  will  have  been 
affectionately  conned  and  sifted;  and  perhaps  some 
favorite  pieces  will  be  denied  because  the  authors  have 
reasons  for  withholding  permission.  It  would  be  en- 
joyable (for  me,  at  any  rate)  to  write  an  essay  on  the 
things  I  have  lingered  over  with  intent  to  include  them 
in  this  little  book,  but  have  finally  sacrificed  for  one 
reason  or  another.  How  many  times — twenty  at  least 
— I  have  taken  down  from  my  shelf  Mr.  Chesterton's 
The  Victorian  Age  in  Literature  to  reconsider  whether 

iii 


iv  Preface 

his  ten  pages  on  Dickens,  or  his  glorious  summing-up 
of  Decadents  and  -Esthetes,  were  not  absolutely  essen- 
tial. How  many  times  I  have  palpitated  upon  certain 
passages  in  The  Education  of  Henry  Adams  and  in 
Mr.  Wells's  Outline  of  History,  which,  I  assured  my- 
self, would  legitimately  stand  as  essays  if  shrewdly 
excerpted. 

But  I  usually  concluded  that  would  not  be  quite 
fair.  I  have  not  been  overscrupulous  in  this  matter, 
for  the  essay  is  a  mood  rather  than  a  form ;  the  fron- 
tier between  the  essay  and  the  short  story  is  as  imper- 
ceptible as  is  at  present  the  once  famous  Mason  and 
Dixon  line.  Indeed,  in  that  pleasant  lowland  country 
between  the  two  empires  lie  (to  my  way  of  think- 
ing) some  of  the  most  fertile  fields  of  prose — fiction 
that  expresses  feeling  and  character  and  setting  rather 
than  action  and  plot;  fiction  beautifully  ripened  by  the 
lingering  mild  sunshine  of  the  essayist's  mood.  This 
is  fiction,  I  might  add,  extremely  unlikely  to  get  into 
the  movies.  I  think  of  short  stories  such  as  George 
Gissing's,  in  that  too  little  known  volume  The  House 
of  Cobwebs,  which  I  read  again  and  again  at  midnight 
with  unfailing  delight;  fall  asleep  over;  forget;  and 
again  re-read  with  undiminished  satisfaction.  They 
have  no  brilliance  of  phrase,  no  smart  surprises,  no 
worked-up  'situations'  which  have  to  be  taken  at  high 
speed  to  pass  without  breakdown  over  their  brittle 


Preface  V 

bridge  work  of  credibility.  They  have  only  the  mod- 
est and  faintly  melancholy  savor  of  life  itself. 
^^  ^iimk  it  is  a  mere  quibble  to  pretend  that  the  essay 
does  not  have  easily  recognizable  manners.  It  may 
be  severely  planned,  or  it  may  ramble  in  ungirdled 
mood,  but  it  has  its  own  point  of  view  that  marks  it 
from  the  short  story  proper,  or  the  merely  personal 
memoir.  That_distinction,  easily  felt  by  the  sensi- 
tive reader,  is  not  readily  expressible.  Perhaps  the 
true  meaning  of  the  word  essay — an  attempt — gives 
a  clue.  No  matter  how  personal  or  trifling  the  topic 
may  be,  there  is  always  a  tendency  to  generalize,  to 
walk  round  the  subject  or  the  experience,  and  view 
it  from  several  vantages;  instead  of  (as  in  the  short 
story)  cutting  a  carefully  landscaped  path  through  a 
chosen  tract  of  human  complication.  So  an  essay  can 
never  be  more  than  an  atternpt,  jfor  it  is  an  excursion 
^nto  the  endless,  j  Any  student  of  fiction  will  admit  that 
in  the  composition  of  a  short  story  many  entertaining 
and  valuable  elaborations  may  rise  in  the  mind  of  the 
author  which  must  be  strictly  rejected  because  they 
do  not  forward  the  essential  motive.  But  in  the  essay 
(of  an  informal  sort)  we  ask  not  relev^ce  to  plot, 
but  relevance  to  mood.  That  is  why  there  are  so 
many  essays  that  are  mere  marking  time.  The  familiar  » 
essay  is  easier  to  write  than  the  short  story,  but  it  im- 
poses equal  restraints  on  a  scrupulous  author.    For  in 


vi  Preface 

fiction  the  writer  is  controlled  and  limited  and  ..smept 
along  by  his  material;  but  in  the  essay,  lh£-,writer  rides 
his  pen.  A  good  story,  once  clearly  conceived,  almost 
"writes  itself;  but  essays  are  written. 

There  also  we  find  a  pitfall  of  the  personal  essay — 
the  temptation  to  become  too  ostentatiously  quaint, 
too  deliberately  'whimsical*  (the  word  which,  by 
loathsome  repetition,  has  become  emetic).  The  fine 
flavor  and  genius  of  the  essay — as  in  Bacon  and 
Montaigne,  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  Thackeray,  Thoreau;  per- 
haps even  in  Stevenson — is  the  rich  bouquet  of  per- 
sonality. But  soliloquy  must  not  fall  into  monologue. 
One  might  put  it  thus:  that  the  perfection  of  the 
familiar  essay  is  a  conscious  revelation  of  self  done 
inadvertently. 

The  art  of  the  anthologist  is  the  art  of  the  host :  his 
tact  is  exerted  in  choosing  a  congenial  group ;  making 
them  feel  comfortable  and  at  ease;  keeping  the  wine 
and  tobacco  in  circulation;  while  his  eye  is  tenderly 
alert  down  the  bright  vista  of  tablecloth,  for  any  lapse 
in  the  general  cheer.  It  is  well,  also,  for  him  to  hold 
himself  discreetly  in  the  background,  giving  his  guests 
the  pleasure  of  clinching  the  jape,  and  seeking  only,  by 
innocent  wiles,  to  draw  each  one  into  some  charac- 
teristic and  felicitous  vein.  I  think  T  can  offer  you,  in 
this  parliament  of  philomaths,  entertainment  of  the 


Preface  vii 

most  genuine  sort;  and  having  said  so  much,  I  might 
well  retire  and  be  heard  no  more. 

But  I  think  it  is  well  to  state,  as  even  the  most  bashful 
host  may  do,  just  why  this  particular  company  has  been 
called  together.  My  intention  is  not  merely  to  please 
the  amiable  dilettante,  though  I  hope  to  do  that  too. 
I  made  my  choices,  first  and  foremost,  with  a  view  to 
stimulating  those  who  are  themselves  interested  in 
the  arts  of  writing.  I  have,  to  be  frank,  a  secret  am- 
bition that  a  book  of  this  sort  may  even  be  used  as  a 
small  but  useful  weapon  in  the  classroom.  I  wanted  to 
bring  it  home  to  the  student  that  as  brilliant  and  sin- 
cere work  is  being  done  to-day  in  the  essay  as  in  any 
period  of  our  literature.  Accordingly  the  pieces  re- 
printed here  are  very  diverse.  There  is  the  grand 
manner;  there  is  foolery;  there  is  straightforward 
literary  criticism;  there  is  pathos,  politics,  and  the  pic- 
turesque. But  every  selection  is,  in  its  own  way, 
a  work  of  art.  And  I  would  call  the  reader^s  atten- 
tion to  this:  that  the  greater  number  of  these  essays 
were  written  not  by  retired  aesthetes,  but  by  practising 
journalists  in  the  harness  of  the  daily  or  weekly  press. 
The  names  of  some  of  the  most  widely  bruited  essay- 
ists of  our  day  are  absent  from  this  roster,  not  by 
malice,  but  because  I  desired  to  include  material  less 
generally  known. 


viii  Preface 

I  should  apologize,  I  suppose,  for  the  very  informal 
tone  of  the  introductory  notes  on  each  author.  But  I 
conceived  the  reader  in  the  role  of  a  friend  spending 
the  evening  in  happy  gossip  along  the  shelves.  Pulling 
out  one*s  favorites  and  talking  about  them,  now  and 
then  reading  a  chosen  extract  aloud,  and  ending  (some 
time  after  midnight)  by  choosing  some  special  volume 
for  the  guest  to  take  to  bed  with  him — in  the  same 
spirit  I  have  compiled  this  collection.  Perhaps  the  edi- 
torial comments  have  too  much  the  manner  of  dress- 
ing gown  and  slippers;  but  what  a  pleasant  book  this 
will  be  to  read  in  bed! 

And  perhaps  this  collection  may  be  regarded  as  a 
small  contribution  to  Anglo-American  friendliness. 
Of  course  when  I  say  Anglo-,  I  mean  Brito-,  but  that 
is  such  a  hideous  prefix.  Journalists  on  this  side  are 
much  better  acquainted  with  what  their  professional 
colleagues  are  doing  in  Britain,  than  they  with  our 
concerns.  But  surely  there  should  be  a  congenial  fra- 
ternity of  spirit  among  all  who  use  the  English  tongue 
in  print.  There  are  some  of  us  who  even  imagine  a 
day  when  there  may  be  regular  international  exchanges 
of  journalists,  as  there  have  been  of  scholars  and  stu- 
dents. The  contributions  to  this  book  are  rather  evenly 
divided  between  British  and  American  hands ;  and  per- 
haps it  is  not  insignificant  that  two  of  the  most  pleas- 


Preface  ix 

ing  items  come  from  Canada,  where  they  often  com- 
bine the  virtues  of  both  sides. 

It  is  a  pleasant  task  to  thank  the  authors  and  pub- 
lishers who  have  assented  to  the  reprinting  of  these 
pieces.  To  the  authors  themselves,  and  to  the  follow- 
ing publishers,  I  admit  my  sincere  gratitude  for  the  use 
of  material  copyrighted  by  them: — Doubleday  Page 
and  Company  for  the  extracts  from  books  by  John 
Macy  and  Pearsall  Smith;  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 
for  Rupert  Brooke's  Niagara  Falls;  the  George  H. 
Doran  Company  for  the  essays  by  Joyce  Kilmer  and 
Robert  Cortes  Holliday;  Mr.  James  B.  Pinker  for  per- 
mission to  reprint  Mr.  Conrad's  Preface  to  A  Personal 
Record;  Alfred  A.  Knopf,  Inc.,  for  the  essays  by  H. 
M.  Tomlinson,  A.  P.  Herbert  and  Philip  Guedalla; 
Lady  Osier  for  the  essay  by  the  late  Sir  William  Osier ; 
the  New  York  Evening  Post  for  the  essay  by  Stuart 
P.  Sherman;  Harcourt,  Brace  and  Company  for  the 
essay  by  Heywood  Broun ;  The  Weekly  Review  for  the 
essays  by  O.  W.  Firkins,  Harry  Morgan  Ayres  and 
Robert  Palfrey  Utter.  The  present  ownership  of  the 
copyright  of  the  essay  by  Louise  Imogen  Guiney  I 
have  been  unable  to  discover.  It  was  published  in 
Patrins  (Copeland  and  Day,  1897),  which  has  long 
been  out  of  print.  Knowing  the  purity  of  my  motives 
I  have  used  this  essay,  hoping  that  it  might  introduce 


'X  Preface 

Miss  Guiney^s  exquisite  work  to  the  younger  genera- 
tion that  knows  her  hardly  at  all. 

Christopher  Morley 
October,  igsi 


CONTENTS 


'Er 


Us- 


Preface  

American  Literature 
Mary  White    . 
Niagara    Falls 
"A  Clergyman" 
*'The  Man  o'  War's 

band"    .... 
The   Market    .     . 
Holy  Ireland   .     . 
A  Familiar  Preface 
On  Drawing    .     . 
O.    Henry    .     .     . 
The  Mowing  of  a 
The   Student   Life 
The  Decline  of  the  Drama  . 
America     and     the     English 

Tradition 

The  Fifty-first  Dragon    .     . 

Some  Historians 

Samuel  Butler 

Bed-Books  and  Night-Lights  . 
The  Precept  of  Peace  .     .     . 

Winter  Mist 

Trivia 

The  Fish  Reporter  .... 


Field 


J^hn  Macy  .     .  . 
William  Allen  White 

Rupert  Brooke  .  . 
Max  Beerbohm 

David   W.  Bone  . 
William  McFee 

Joyce   Kilmer    .  . 

Joseph  Conrad  .  . 

A.  P.  Herbert  .  . 

O.  W.  Firkins  .  . 

Hilaire  Belloc   .  . 

William  Osier  .  . 

Stephen  Leacock  , 


Harry  Morgan  Ayres 
Heywood  Broun  . 
Philip  Guedalla  .  . 
Stuart  P.  Sherman  . 
H.  M.  Tomlinson  .  . 
Louise  Imogen  Guiney 
Robert  Palfrey  Utter  . 
Logan  Pearsall  Smith 
Robert  Cortes  Holliday 


PAGE 

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04 
100 
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145 

153 
160 

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210 
219 
229 

235 
242 


MODERN  ESSAYS 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE 
By  John  Macy 

This  vigorous  survey  of  American  letters  is  the  first  chapter 
of  John  Macy's  admirable  volume  The  Spirit  of  American  Lit- 
erature, published  in  191 3 — a  book  shrewd,  penetrating  and  salty, 
which  has  unfortunately  never  reached  one-tenth  of  the  many 
readers  who  would  find  it  permanently  delightful  and  profitable. 
Mr.  Macy  has  no  skill  in  vaudeville  tricks  to  call  attention  to 
himself:  no  shafts  of  limelight  have  followed  him  across  the 
stage.  But  those  who  have  an  eye  for  criticism  that  is  vivacious 
without  bombast,  austere  without  bitterness,  keen  without  malice, 
know  him  as  one  of  the  truly  competent  and  liberal-minded  ob- 
servers of  the  literary  scene. 

Mr.  Macy  was  born  in  Detroit,  1877 ;  graduated  from  Harvard 
in  1899;  did  editorial  service  on  the  Youth's  Companion  and  the 
Boston  Herald;  and  nowadays  lives  pensively  in  Greenwich  Vil- 
lage, writing  a  good  deal  for  The  Freeman  and  The  Literary 
Review.  Perhaps,  if  you  were  wandering  on  Fourth  Street,  east 
of  Sixth  Avenue,  you  might  see  him  treading  thoughtfully  along, 
with  a  wide  sombrero  hat,  and  always  troubled  by  an  iron-gray 
forelock  that  droops  over  his  brow.  You  would  know,  as  soon 
as  you  saw  him,  that  he  is  a  man  greatly  lovable.  I  like  to 
think  of  him  as  I  first  saw  him,  some  years  ago,  in  front  of  the 
bright  hearth  of  the  charming  St.  Botolf^  -^luban  Boston,  j»/^'here 
he  was  usually  the  center  of  an  animated"  group  of  hocLurnal 
philosophers.  >'*     ^    ,      ,  ..„,»•',  •,•  »    ", 

The  essay  was  written  in  1912,  before  the  Very  real  i'ea«vakcn; 
ing  of  American  creative  work  thac  began  in  the  'teens  of 'this 
century.  The  reader  will  find  it  interesting  to  consider  how  far 
Mr.  Macy's  remarks  might  be  modified  if  he  were  writing  to-day. 

The  Spirit  of  American  Literature  has  been  reissued  in  an 
inexpensive  edition  by  Boni  and  Liveright.  It  is  a  book  well 
worth  owning. 

American  literature  is  a  branch  of  English  litera* 
ture,  as  truly  as  are  English  books  written  in  Scotland 
or  South  Africa.  Our  literature  lies  almost  entirely 
in  the  nineteenth  century  when  the  ideas  and  books  of 

3 


4  John  Macy 

the  western  world  were  freely  interchanged  among 
the  nations  and  became  accessible  to  an  increasing  num- 
ber of  readers.  In  literature  nationality  is  determined 
by  language  rather  than  by  blood  or  geography.  M. 
Maeterlinck,  born  a  subject  of  King  Leopold,  belongs 
to  French  literature.  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad,  born  in 
Poland,  is  already  an  English  classic.  Geography, 
much  less  important  in  the  nineteenth  century  than 
before,  was  never,  among  modern  European  nations, 
so  important  as  we  sometimes  are  asked  to  believe. 
Of  the  ancestors  of  English  literature  "Beowulf"  is 
scarcely  more  significant,  and  rather  less  graceful,  than 
our  tree-inhabiting  forebears  with  prehensile  toes ;  the 
true  progenitors  of  English  literature  are  Greek,  Latin, 
Hebrew,  Italian,  and  French. 

American  literature  and  English  literature  of  the 
nineteenth  century  are  parallel  derivatives  from  pre- 
cediiiig.  centviHfe^,  pf;  English  literature.  Literature  is  a 
suo:ession  of  books  from  books.  Artistic  expression 
isprings  from  life  U'ltirnately  but  not  immediately.  It 
may  be  likened  to  a  river  which  is  swollen  throughout 
its  course  by  new  tributaries  and  by  the  seepages  of 
its  banks;  it  reflects  the  life  through  which  it  flows, 
taking  color  from  the  shores;  the  shores  modify  it, 
but  its  power  and  volume  descend  from  distant  head- 
waters and  affluents  far  up  stream.  Or  it  may  be 
likened  to  the  race-life  which  our  food  nourishes  or 


American  Literature  5 

impoverishes,  which  our  individual  circumstances 
foster  or  damage,  but  which  flows  on  through  us, 
strangely  impersonal  and  beyond  our  power  to  kill  or 
create. 

It  is  well  for  a  writer  to  say:  "Away  with  books! 
I  will  draw  my  inspiration  from  lifeT*  For  we  have 
too  many  books  that  are  simply  better  books  diluted 
by  John  Smith.  At  the  same  time,  literature  is  not 
born  spontaneously  out  of  life.  Every  book  has  its 
literary  parentage,  and  students  find  it  so  easy  to  trace 
genealogies  that  much  criticism  reads  like  an  Old 
Testament  chapter  of  "begats."  Every  novel  was 
suckled  at  the  breasts  of  older  novels,  and  great 
mothers  are  often  prolific  of  anaemic  offspring.  The 
stock  falls  off  and  revives,  goes  a-wandering,  and  re- 
turns like  a  prodigal.  The  family  records  get  blurred. 
But  of  the  main  fact  of  descent  there  is  no  doubt. 

American  literature  is  English  literature  made  in 
this  country.  Its  nineteenth-century  characteristics 
are  evident  and  can  be  analyzed  and  discussed  with 
some  degree  of  certainty.  Its  "American"  character- 
istics— no  critic  that  I  know  has  ever  given  a  good 
account  of  them.  You  can  define  certain  peculiarities 
of  American  politics,  American  agriculture,  Ameri- 
can public  schools,  even  American  religion.  But  what 
is  uniquely  American  in  American  literature?  Poe  is 
just  as  American  as  Mark  Twain;  Lanier  is  just  as 


6  John  Macy 

American  as  Whittier.  The  American  spirit  in  litera- 
ture is  a  myth,  Hke  American  valor  in  war,  which  is 
precisely  like  the  valor  of  Italians  and  Japanese.  The 
American,  deluded  by  a  falsely  idealized  image  which 
he  calls  America,  can  say  that  the  purity  of  Longfellow 
represents  the  purity  of  American  home  life.  An  Irish 
Englishman,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  with  another  falsely 
idealized  image  of  America,  surprised  that  a  face  does 
Tiot  fit  his  image,  can  ask:  "What  is  Poe  doing  in 
that  galley?"  There  is  no  answer.  You  never  can 
tell.  Poe  could  not  help  it.  He  was  born  in  Boston, 
and  lived  in  Richmond,  New  York,  Baltimore,  Phila- 
delphia. Professor  van  Dyke  says  that  Poe  was  a 
maker  of  "decidedly  un-American  cameos,"  but  I  do 
not  understand  what  that  means.  Facts  are  uncom- 
fortable consorts  of  prejudices  and  emotional  gener- 
alities ;  they  spoil  domestic  peace,  and  when  there  is  a 
separation  they  sit  solid  at  home  while  the  other  party 
goes.  Irving,  a  shy,  sensitive  gentleman,  who  wrote 
with  fastidious  care,  said:  "It  has  been  a  matter  of 
marvel,  to  European  readers,  that  a  man  from  the 
wilds  of  America  should  express  himself  in  tolerable 
English."  It  is  a  matter  of  marvel,  just  as  it  is  a 
marvel  that  Blake  and  Keats  flowered  in  the  brutal 
city  of  London  a  hundred  years  ago. 

The  literary  mind  is  strengthened  and  nurtured,  is 
influenced  and  mastered,  by  the  accumulated  riches  of 


American  Literature  7 

literature.  In  the  last  century  the  strongest  thinkers 
in  our  language  were  Englishmen,  and  not  only  the 
traditional  but  the  contemporary  influences  on  our 
thinkers  and  artists  were  British.  This  may  account 
for  one  negative  characteristic  of  American  literature 
— its  lack  of  American  quality.  True,  our  records 
must  reflect  our  life.  Our  poets,  enamored  of  night- 
ingales and  Persian  gardens,  have  not  altogether  for- 
gotten the  mocking-bird  and  the  woods  of  Maine^ 
Fiction,  written  by  inhabitants  of  New  York,  Ohio, 
and  Massachusetts,  does  tell  us  something  of  the  ways 
of  life  in  those  mighty  commonwealths,  just  as  Eng- 
lish fiction  written  by  Lancashire  men  about  Lanca- 
shire people  is  saturated  with  the  dialect,  the  local 
habits  and  scenery  of  that  county.  But  wherever  an 
English-speaking  man  of  imagination  may  dwell,  in 
Dorset  or  Calcutta  or  Indianapolis,  he  is  subject  to 
the  strong  arm  of  the  empire  of  English  literature;  he 
cannot  escape  it;  it  tears  him  out  of  his  obscure  bed 
and  makes  a  happy  slave  of  him.  He  is  assigned  to 
the  department  of  the  service  for  which  his  gifts 
qualify  him,  and  his  special  education  is  undertaken  by 
drill-masters  and  captains  who  hail  from  provinces  far 
from  his  birthplace. 

Dickens,  who  writes  of  London,  influences  Bret 
Harte,  who  writes  of  California,  and  Bret  Harte  in- 
fluences Kipling,  who  writes  of  India.     Each  is  in- 


8  John  Macy 

tensely  local  in  subject  matter.  The  affinity  between 
them  is  a  matter  of  temperament,  manifested,  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  swagger  and  exaggeration  characteristic 
of  all  three.  California  did  not  "produce"  Bret  Harte ; 
the  power  of  Dickens  was  greater  than  that  of  the 
Sierras  and  the  Golden  Gate.  Bret  Harte  created  a 
California  that  never  existed,  and  Indian  gentlemen, 
Caucasian  and  Hindoo,  tell  us  that  Kipling  invented  an 
army  and  an  empire  unknown  to  geographers  and  war- 
ofBces. 

The  ideas  at  work  among  these  English  men  of  let- 
ters are  world-encircling  and  fly  between  book  and 
brain.  The  dominant  power  is  on  the  British  Islands, 
and  the  prevailing  stream  of  influence  flows  west 
across  the  Atlantic.  Sometimes  it  turns  and  runs  the 
other  way.  Poe  influenced  Rossetti;  Whitman  influ- 
enced Henley.  For  a  century  Cooper  has  been  in  com- 
mand of  the  British  literary  marine.  Literature  is 
reprehensibly  unpatriotic,  even  though  its  votaries  are, 
as  individual  citizens,  afflicted  with  local  prides  and 
hostilities.  It  takes  only  a  dramatic  interest  in  the 
guns  of  Yorktown.  Its  philosophy  was  nobly  uttered 
by  Gaston  Paris  in  the  College  de  France  in  1870, 
when  the  city  was  beleaguered  by  the  German  armies : 
"Common  studies,  pursued  in  the  same  spirit,  in  all 
civilized  countries,  form,  beyond  the  restrictions  of 
diverse  and  often  hostile  nationalities,  a  great  country 


American  Literature  9 

which  no  war  profanes,  no  conqueror  menaces,  where 
souls  find  that  refuge  and  unity  which  in  former  times 
was  offered  them  by  the  city  of  God."  The  cathoHcity 
of  English  language  and  literature  transcends  the  tem- 
poral boundaries  of  states. 

What,  then,  of  the  "provincialism"  of  the  American 
province  of  the  empire  of  British  hterature?  Is  it  an 
observable  general  characteristic,  and  is  it  a  virtue  or 
a  vice  ?  There  is  a  sense  in  which  American  literature 
is  not  provincial  enough.  The  most  provincial  of  all 
literature  is  the  Greek.  The  Greeks  knew  nothing  out- 
side of  Greece  and  needed  to  know  nothing.  The  Old 
Testament  is  tribal  in  its  provinciality;  its  god  is  a 
local  god,  and  its  village  police  and  sanitary  regulations 
are  erected  into  eternal  laws.  If  this  racial  localism  is 
not  essential  to  the  greatness  of  early  literatures,  it  is 
inseparable  from  them;  we  find  it  there.  It  is  not 
possible  in  our  cosmopolitan  age  and  there  are  few 
traces  of  it  in  American  books.  No  American  poet 
has  sung  of  his  neighborhood  with  naive  passion,  as  if 
it  were  all  the  world  to  him.  Whitman  is  pugnaciously 
American,  but  his  sympathies  are  universal,  his  vision 
is  cosmic ;  when  he  seems  to  be  standing  in  a  city  street 
looking  at  life,  he  is  in  a  trance,  and  his  spirit  is  racing 
with  the  winds. 

The  welcome  that  we  gave  Whitman  betrays  the  lack 
of  an  admirable  kind  of  provincialism;  it  shows  us 


lO  John  Macy 

defective  in  local  security  of  judgment.  Some  of  us 
have  been  so  anxiously  abashed  by  high  standards  of 
European  culture  that  we  could  not  see  a  poet  in  our 
own  back  yard  until  European  poets  and  critics  told 
us  he  was  there.  This  is  queerly  contradictory  to  a 
disposition  found  in  some  Americans  to  disregard 
world  standards  and  proclaim  a  third-rate  poet  as  the 
Milton  of  Oshkosh  or  the  Shelley  of  San  Francisco. 
The  passage  in  Lowell's  "Fable  for  Critics"  about 
"The  American  Bulwers,  Disraelis  and  Scotts"  is  a 
spoonful  of  salt  in  the  mouth  of  that  sort  of  gaping 
village  reverence. 

Of  dignified  and  self-respecting  provincialism,  such 
as  Professor  Royce  so  eloquently  advocates,  there 
might  well  be  more  in  American  books.  Our  poets 
desert  the  domestic  landscape  to  write  pseudo-Eliza- 
bethan dramas  and  sonnets  about  Mont  Blanc.  They 
set  up  an  artificial  Tennyson  park  on  the  banks  of  the 
Hudson.  Beside  the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan  they 
croon  the  love  affairs  of  an  Arab  in  the  desert  and  his 
noble  steed.  This  is  not  a  very  grave  offence,  for  poets 
live  among  the  stars,  and  it  makes  no  difference  from 
what  point  of  the  earth's  surface  they  set  forth  on 
their  aerial  adventures.  A  Wisconsin  poet  may  write 
very  beautifully  about  nightingales,  and  a  New  Eng- 
land Unitarian  may  write  beautifully  about  cathedrals; 
if  it  is  beautiful,  it  is  poetry,  and  all  is  well. 


American  Literature  li 

The  novelists  are  the  worst  offenders.  There  have 
been  few  of  them;  they  have  not  been  adequate  in 
numbers  or  in  genius  to  the  task  of  describing  the 
sections  of  the  country,  the  varied  scenes  and  habits 
from  New  Orleans  to  the  Portlands.  And  yet,  small 
band  as  they  are,  with  great  domestic  opportunities 
and  responsibilities,  they  have  devoted  volumes  to 
Paris,  which  has  an  able  native  corps  of  story-makers, 
and  to  Italy,  where  the  home  talent  is  first-rate.  In 
this  sense  American  literature  is  too  globe-trotting,  it 
has  too  little  savor  of  the  soil. 

Of  provincialism  of  the  narrowest  type  American 
writers,  like  other  men  of  imagination,  are  not  guilty 
to  any  reprehensible  degree.  It  is  a  vice  sometimes 
imputed  to  them  by  provincial  critics  who  view  litera- 
ture from  the  office  of  a  London  weekly  review  or 
from  the  lecture  rooms  of  American  colleges.  Some 
American  writers  are  parochial,  for  example,  Whittier. 
Others,  like  Mr.  Henry  James,  are  provincial  in  out- 
look, but  cosmopolitan  in  experience,  and  reveal  their 
provinciality  by  a  self-conscious  internationalism. 
Probably  English  and  French  writers  may  be  similarly 
classified  as  provincial  or  not  Mr.  James  says  that 
Poe's  collection  of  critical  sketches  "is  probably  the 
most  complete  and  exquisite  specimen  of  provincialism 
ever  prepared  for  the  edification  of  men."  It  is  noth- 
ing like  that.    It  is  an  example  of  what  happens  when 


12  John  Macy 

a  hack  reviewer's  work  in  local  journals  is  collected 
into  a  volume  because  he  turns  out  to  be  a  genius.  The 
list  of  Poe's  victims  is  not  more  remarkable  for  the 
number  of  nonentities  it  includes  than  "The  Lives  of 
the  Poets"  by  the  great  Doctor  Johnson,  who  was 
hack  for  a  bookseller,  and  "introduced"  all  the  poets 
that  the  taste  of  the  time  encouraged  the  bookseller 
to  l)rint.  Poe  was  cosmopolitan  in  spirit ;  his  prejudices 
were  personal  and  highly  original,  usually  against  the 
prejudices  of  his  moment  and  milieu.  Hawthorne  is  less 
provincial,  in  the  derogatory  sense,  than  his  charming 
biographer,  Mr.  James,  as  will  become  evident  if  one 
compares  Hawthorne's  American  notes  on  England, 
written  in  long  ago  days  of  national  rancor,  with  Mr. 
James's  British  notes  on  America  ("The  American 
Scene"),  written  in  our  happy  days  of  spacious  vision. 
Emerson's  ensphering  universality  overspreads 
Carlyle  like  the  sky  above  a  volcanic  island.  Indeed 
Carlyle  (who  knew  more  about  American  life  and 
about  what  other  people  ought  to  do  than  any  other 
British  writer  earlier  than  Mr.  Chesterton)  justly  com- 
plains that  Emerson  is  not  sufficiently  local  and  con- 
crete; Carlyle  longs  to  see  "some  Event,  Man's  Life, 
American  Forest,  or  piece  of  creation  which  this 
Emerson  loves  and  wonders  at,  well  Emersonised." 
Longfellow  would  not  stay  at  home  and  write  more 
about  the  excellent  village  blacksmith ;  he  made  poetical 


American  Literature  13 

tours  of  Europe  and  translated  songs  and  legends  from 
several  languages  for  the  delight  of  the  villagers  who 
remained  behind.  Lowell  was  so  heartily  cosmopolitan 
that  American  newspapers  accused  him  of  Anglomania 
— which  proves  their  provincialism  but  acquits  him. 
Mr.  Howells  has  written  a  better  book  about  Venice 
than  about  Ohio.  Mark  Twain  lived  in  every  part  of 
America,  from  Connecticut  to  California,  he  wrote 
about  every  country  under  the  sun  (and  about  some 
countries  beyond  the  sun),  he  is  read  by  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men  in  the  English-speaking  world,  and 
he  is  an  adopted  hero  in  Vienna.  It  is  difficult  to 
come  to  any  conclusion  about  provincialism  as  a  char- 
acteristic of  American  literature. 

American  literature  is  on  the  whole  idealistic,  sweet, 
delicate,  nicely  finished.  There  is  little  of  it  which 
might  not  have  appeared  in  the  Youth's  Companion, 
The  notable  exceptions  are  our  most  stalwart  men  o4 
genius,  Thoreau,  Whitman,  and  Mark  Twain.  Any 
child  can  read  American  literature,  and  if  it  does  not 
make  a  man  of  him,  it  at  least  will  not  lead  him  into 
forbidden  realms.  Indeed,  American  books  too  seldom 
come  to  grips  with  the  problems  of  life,  especially  the 
books  cast  in  artistic  forms.  The  essayists,  expounders, 
and  preachers  attack  life  vigorously  and  wrestle  with 
the  meaning  of  it.  The  poets  are  thin,  moonshiny, 
meticulous  in  technique.    Novelists  are  few  and  feeble. 


14  John  Macy 

and  dramatists  are  non-existent.  These  generalities, 
subject  to  exceptions,  are  confirmed  by  a  reading  of 
the  first  fifteen  volumes  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  which 
are  a  treasure-house  of  the  richest  period  of  American 
literary  expression.  In  those  volumes  one  finds  a  sur- 
prising number  of  vigorous,  distinguished  papers  on 
politics,  philosophy,  science,  even  on  literature  and  art. 
Many  talented  men  and  women,  whose  names  are  not 
well  remembered,  are  clustered  there  about  the  half 
dozen  salient  men  of  genius;  and  the  collection  gives 
one  a  sense  that  the  New  England  mind  (aided  by  the 
outlying  contributors)  was,  in  its  one  Age  of  Thought, 
an  abundant  and  diversified  power.  But  the  poetry  is 
not  memorable,  except  for  some  verses  by  the  few 
standard  poets.  And  the  fiction  is  naive.  Edward 
Everett  Hale's  "The  Man  Without  a  Country'*  is  al- 
most the  only  story  there  that  one  comes  on  with  a 
thrill  either  of  recognition  or  of  discovery. 

It  is  hard  to  explain  why  the  American,  except  in  his 
exhortatory  and  passionately  argumentative  moods,  has 
not  struck  deep  into  American  life,  why  his  stories  and 
verses  are,  for  the  most  part,  only  pretty  things,  nicely 
unimportant.  Anthony  Trollope  had  a  theory  that  the 
absence  of  international  copyright  threw  our  market 
open  too  unrestrictedly  to  the  British  product,  that  the 
American  novel  was  an  unprotected  infant  industry; 
we  printed  Dickens  and  the  rest  without  paying  royalty 


American  Literature  1 5 

and  starved  the  domestic  manufacturer.  This  theory 
does  not  explain.  For  there  were  many  American 
novelists,  published,  read,  and  probably  paid  for  their 
work.  The  trouble  is  that  they  lacked  genius;  they 
dealt  with  trivial,  slight  aspects  of  life;  they  did  not 
take  the  novel  seriously  in  the  right  sense  of  the  word, 
though  no  doubt  they  were  in  another  sense  serious 
enough  about  their  poor  productions.  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin"  and  "Huckleberry  Finn"  are  colossal  exceptions 
to  the  prevailing  weakness  and  superficiality  of  Ameri- 
can novels. 

Why  do  American  writers  turn  their  backs  on  life, 
miss  its  intensities,  its  significance?  The  American 
Civil  War  was  the  most  tremendous  upheaval  in  the 
world  after  the  Napoleonic  period.  The  imaginative 
reaction  on  it  consists  of  some  fine  essays,  Lincoln's 
addresses,  W^hitman's  war  poetry,  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin"  (which  came  before  the  war  but  is  part  of  it), 
one  or  two  passionate  hymns  by  Whittier,  the  second 
series  of  the  "Biglow  Papers,"  Hale's  "The  Man  With- 
out a  Country" — and  what  else?  The  novels  laid  in 
war-time  are  either  sanguine  melodrama  or  absurd 
idyls  of  maidens  whose  lovers  are  at  the  front — a 
tragic  theme  if  tragically  and  not  sentimentally  con- 
ceived. Perhaps  the  bullet  that  killed  Theodore  Win- 
throp  deprived  us  of  our  great  novelist  of  the  Civil 
War,  for  he  was  on  the  right  road.     In  a  general 


1 6  John  Macy 

speculation  such  a  might-have-been  is  not  altogether 
futile;  if  Milton  had  died  of  whooping  cough  there 
would  not  have  been  any  "Paradise  Lost";  the  reverse 
of  this  is  that  some  geniuses  whose  works  ought  in- 
evitably to  have  been  produced  by  this  or  that  national 
development  may  have  died  too  soon.  This  suggestion, 
however,  need  not  be  gravely  argued.  The  fact  is 
that  the  American  literary  imagination  after  the  Civil 
War  was  almost  sterile.  If  no  books  had  been  written, 
the  failure  of  that  conflict  to  get  itself  embodied  in 
some  masterpieces  would  be  less  disconcerting.  But 
thousands  of  books  were  written  by  people  who  knew 
the  war  at  first  hand  and  who  had  literary  ambition  and 
some  skill,  and  from  all  these  books  none  rises  to  dis- 
tinction. 

An  example  of  what  seems  to  be  the  American  habit 
of  writing  about  everything  except  American  life,  is 
the  work  of  General  Lew  Wallace.  Wallace  was  one 
of  the  important  secondary  generals  in  the  Civil  War, 
distinguished  at  Fort  Donelson  and  at  Shiloh.  After 
the  war  he  wrote  "Ben-Hur,"  a  doubly  abominable 
book,  because  it  is  not  badly  written  and  it  shows  a 
lively  imagination.  There  is  nothing  in  it  so  valuable, 
so  dramatically  significant  as  a  week  in  Wallace's  war 
experiences.  "Ben-Hur,"  fit  work  for  a  country  clergy- 
man with  a  pretty  literary  gift,  is  a  ridiculous  inanity 
to  come  from  a  man  who  has  seen  the  things  that 


American  Literature  17 

Wallace  saw!  It  is  understandable  that  the  man  of 
experience  may  not  write  at  all,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  man  of  secluded  life  may  have  the  imagination 
to  make  a  military  epic.  But  for  a  man  crammed  with 
experience  of  the  most  dramatic  sort  and  discovering 
the  ability  and  the  ambition  to  write — for  him  to  make 
spurious  oriental  romances  which  achieve  an  enormous 
popularity!  The  case  is  too  grotesque  to  be  typical, 
yet  it  is  exceptional  in  degree  rather  than  in  kind. 
The  American  literary  artist  has  written  about  every- 
thing under  the  skies  except  what  matters  most  in  his 
own  life.  General  Grant's  plain  autobiography,  not  art 
and  of  course  not  attempting  to  be,  is  better  literature 
than  most  of  our  books  in  artistic  forms,  because  of 
its  intellectual  integrity  and  the  profound  importance 
of  the  subject-matter. 

Our  dreamers  have  dreamed  about  many  wonderful 
things,  but  their  faces  have  been  averted  from  the 
mightier  issues  of  life.  They  have  been  high-minded, 
fine-grained,  eloquent  in  manner,  in  odd  contrast  to 
the  real  or  reputed  vigor  and  crudeness  of  the  nation. 
In  the  hundred  years  from  Irving's  first  romance  to 
Mr.  Howells's  latest  unromantic  novel,  most  of  our 
books  are  eminent  for  just  those  virtues  which  Amer- 
ica is  supposed  to  lack.  Their  physique  is  feminine; 
they  are  fanciful,  dainty,  reserved;  they  are  literose, 
sophisticated  in  craftsmanship,  but  innocently  unaware 


1 8  John  Macy 

of  the  profound  agitations  of  American  life,  of  life 
everywhere.  Those  who  strike  the  deeper  notes  of 
reality,  Whitman,  Thoreau,  Mark  Twain,  Mrs.  Stowe 
in  her  one  great  book,  Whittier,  Lowell  and  Emerson 
at  their  best,  are  a  powerful  minority.  The  rest,  beau- 
tiful and  fine  in  spirit,  too  seldom  show  that  they  are 
conscious  of  contemporaneous  realities,  too  seldom  vi- 
brate with  a  tremendous  sense  of  life. 

The  Jason  of  western  exploration  writes  as  if  he 
had  passed  his  life  in  a  library.  The  Ulysses  of  great 
rivers  and  perilous  seas  is  a  connoisseur  of  Japanese 
prints.  The  warrior  of  'Sixty-one  rivals  Miss  Marie 
Corelli.  The  mining  engineer  carves  cherry  stones. 
He  who  is  figured  as  gaunt,  hardy  and  aggressive, 
conquering  the  desert  with  the  steam  locomotive, 
sings  of  a  pretty  little  rose  in  a  pretty  little  garden. 
The  judge,  haggard  with  experience,  who  presides  over 
the  most  tragi-comic  divorce  court  ever  devised  by 
man,  writes  love  stories  that  would  have  made  Jane 
Austen  smile. 

Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  is  reported  to  have  said  that  if 
Balzac  had  seen  Pittsburgh,  he  would  have  cried : 
"Give  me  a  pen  !'*  The  truth  is,  the  whole  country  is 
crying  out  for  those  who  will  record  it,  satirize  it, 
chant  it.  As  literary  material,  it  is  virgin  land,  ancient 
as  life  and  fresh  as  a  wilderness.  American  literature 
is  one  occupation  which  is  not  over-crowded,  in  which. 


American  Literature  19 

indeed,  there  is  all  too  little  competition  for  the  new- 
comer to  meet.  There  are  signs  that  some  earnest 
youn^  writers  are  discovering  the  fertility  of  a  soil 
that  has  scarcely  been  scratched. 

American  fiction  shows  all  sorts  of  merit,  but  the 
merits  are  not  assembled,  concentrated;  the  fine  is 
weak,  and  the  strong  is  crude.  The  stories  of  Poe, 
Hawthorne,  Howells,  James,  Aldrich,  Bret  Harte,  are 
admirable  in  manner,  but  they  are  thin  in  substance, 
not  of  large  vitality.  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the 
stronger  American  fictions  fail  in  workmanship;  for 
example,  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  which  is  still  vivid 
and  moving  long  after  its  tractarian  interest  has  faded : 
the  novels  of  Frank  Norris,  a  man  of  great  vision  and 
high  purpose,  who  attempted  to  put  national  economics 
into  something  like  an  epic  of  daily  bread;  and  Herman 
Melville's  "Moby  Dick,"  a  madly  eloquent  romance  of 
the  sea.  A  few  American  novelists  have  felt  the  mean- 
ing of  the  life  they  knew  and  have  tried  sincerely  to 
set  it  down,  but  have  for  various  reasons  failed  to 
make  first-rate  novels ;  for  example,  Edward  Eggleston, 
whose  stories  of  early  Indiana  have  the  breath  of  ac- 
tuality in  them;  Mr.  E.  W.  Howe,  author  of  "The 
Story  of  a  Country  Town" ;  Harold  Frederic,  a  man  of 
great  ability,  whose  work  was  growing  deeper,  more 
significant  when  he  died;  George  W.  Cable,  whose 
novels  are  unsteady  and  sentimental,  but  who  gives  a 


20  John  Macy 

genuine  impression  of  having  portrayed  a  city  and  its 
people;  and  Stephen  Crane,  who,  dead  at  thirty,  had 
given  in  "The  Red  Badge  of  Courage"  and  "Maggie" 
the  promise  of  better  work.  Of  good  short  stories 
America  has  been  prolific.  Mrs.  Wilkins-Freeman, 
Mrs,  Annie  Trumbull  Slosson,  Sarah  Orne  Jewett, 
Rowland  Robinson,  H.  C.  Bunner,  Edward  Everett 
Hale,  Frank  Stockton,  Joel  Chandler  Harris,  and  "O. 
Henry"  are  some  of  those  whose  short  stories  are  per- 
fect in  their  several  kinds.  But  the  American  novel, 
which  multiplies  past  counting,  remains  an  inferior 
production. 

On  a  private  shelf  of  contemporary  fiction  and 
drama  in  the  English  language  are  the  works  of  ten 
British  authors,  Mr.  Galsworthy,  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells, 
Mr.  Arnold  Bennett,  Mr.  Eden  Phillpotts,  Mr.  George 
Moore,  Mr.  Leonard  Merrick,  Mr.  J.  C.  Snaith,  Miss 
May  Sinclair,  Mr.  William  De  Morgan,  Mr.  Maurice 
Hewlett,  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  yes, 
and  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling.  Beside  them  I  find  but 
two  Americans,  Mrs.  Edith  Wharton  and  Mr.  Theo- 
dore Dreiser.  There  may  be  others,  for  one  cannot 
pretend  to  know  all  the  living  novelists  and  dramatists. 
Yet  for  every  American  that  should  be  added,  I  would 
agree  to  add  four  to  the  British  list.  However,  a  con- 
temporary literature  that  includes  Mrs.  Wharton's 
"Ethan  Frome"  and  Mr.  Dreiser's  "Jennie  Gerhardt** 


American  Literature  21 

both  published  last  year,  is  not  to  be  despaired  of. 
In  the  course  of  a  century  a  few  Americans  have 
said  in  memorable  words  what  life  meant  to  them. 
Their  performance,  put  together,  is  considerable,  if 
not  imposing.  Any  sense  of  dissatisfaction  that  one 
feels  in  contemplating  it  is  due  to  the  disproportion  be- 
tween a  limited  expression  and  the  multifarious  im- 
mensity of  the  country.  Our  literature,  judged  by  the 
great  literatures  contemporaneous  with  it,  is  insuffi- 
cient to  the  opportunity  and  the  need.  The  American 
Spirit  may  be  figured  as  petitioning  the  Muses  for 
twelve  novelists,  ten  poets,  and  eight  dramatists,  to  be 
delivered  at  the  earliest  possible  moment. 


MARY  WHITE ' 
By  William  Allen  White 

Mary  White — ons  seems  to  know  her  after  reading  this  sketch 
written  by  her  father  on  the  day  she  was  buried — would  surely 
have  laughed  unbelievingly  if  told  she  would  be  in  a  book  of 
this  sort,  together  with  Joseph  Conrad,  one  of  whose  books  lay 
on  her  table.  But  the  pen,  in  the  honest  hand,  has  always  been 
mightier  than  the  grave. 

This  is  not  the  sort  of  thing  one  wishes  to  mar  with  clumsy 
comment.  It  was  written  for  the  Emporia  Gazette,  which  Wil- 
liam Allen  White  has  edited  since  1895.  He  is  one  of  the  best- 
known,  most  public-spirited  and  most  truly  loved  of  Am.erican 
journalists.  He  and  his  fellow-Kansan,  E.  W.  Howe  of  Atchison, 
are  two  characteristic  figures  in  our  newspaper  world,  both 
masters  of  that  vein  of  canny,  straightforward,  humane  and 
humorous  simplicity  that  seems  to  be  a  Kansas  birthright. 

Mr.  White  was  born  in  Emporia  in  1868. 

The  Associated  Press  reports  carrying  the  news  of 
Mary  White's  death  declared  that  it  came  as  the 
result  of  a  fall  from  a  horse.  How  she  would  have 
hooted  at  that!  She  never  fell  from  a  horse  in  her 
life.  Horses  have  fallen  on  her  and  with  her — *T'm 
always  trying  to  hold  'em  in  my  lap,"  she  used  to  say. 
But  she  was  proud  of  few  things,  and  one  was  that 
she  could  ride  anything  that  had  four  legs  and  hair. 
Her  death  resulted  not  from  a  fall,  but  from  a  blow 
on  the  head  which  fractured  her  skull,  and  the  blow 
came  from  the  limb  of  an  overhanging  tree  on  the 
parking. 

22 


Mary  White  23 

The  last  hour  of  her  Hfe  was  typical  of  its  happi- 
ness. She  came  home  from  a  day's  work  at  school, 
topped  off  by  a  hard  grind  with  the  cogy  oit  the  High 
School  Annual,  and  felt  that  a  ride  would  refresh  her. 
She  climbed  into  her  khakis,  chattering  to  her  mother 
about  the  work  she  was  doing,  and  hurried  to  get  her 
horse  and  be  out  on  the  dirt  roads  for  the  country  air 
and  the  radiant  green  fields  of  the  spring.  As  she  rode 
through  the  town  on  an  easy  gallop  she  kept  waving  at 
passers-by.  She  knew  everyone  in  town.  For  a  dec- 
ade the  little  figure  with  the  long  pig-tail  and  the  red 
hair  ribbon  has  been  familiar  on  the  streets  of  Em- 
poria, and  she  got  in  the  way  of  speaking  to  those  who 
nodded  at  her.  She  passed  the  Kerrs,  walking  the 
horse,  in  front  of  the  Normal  Library,  and  waved  at 
them ;  passed  another  friend  a  few  hundred  feet  further 
on,  and  waved  at  her.  The  horse  was  walking  and, 
as  she  turned  into  North  Merchant  Street  she  took  off 
her  cowboy  hat,  and  the  horse  swung  into  a  lope.  She 
passed  the  Tripletts  and  waved  her  cowboy  hat  at  them, 
still  moving  gaily  north  on  Merchant  Street.  A 
Gazette  carrier  passed — a  High  School  boy  friend — 
and  she  waved  at  him,  but  with  her  bridle  hand;  the 
horse  veered  quickly,  plunged  into  the  parking  where 
the  low-hanging  limb  faced  her,  and,  while  she  still 
looked  back  waving,!  tliQ  blow  came.  But  she  did  not 
fall    from   the  horse;   she   slipped  off,    dazed   a   bit, 

\ 


24  William  Allen  White 

staggered  and   fell  in  a  faint.     She  never  quite  re- 
covered consciousness. 

But  she  did  not  fall  from  the  horse,  neither  was  she 
riding  fast.  A  year  or  so  ago  she  used  to  go  like  the 
wind.  But  that  habit  was  broken,  and  she  used  the 
horse  to  get  into  the  open  to  get  fresh,  hard  exercise, 
and  to  work  off  a  certain  surplus  energy  that  welled 
up  in  her  and  needed  a  physical  outlet.  That  need  has 
been  in  her  heart  for  years.  It  was  back  of  the  impulse 
that  kept  the  dauntless,  little  brown-clad  figure  on  the 
streets  and  country  roads  of  this  community  and  built 
into  a  strong,  muscular  body  what  had  been  a  frail 
and  sickly  frame  during  the  first  years  of  her  life. 
But  the  riding  gave  her  more  than  a  body.  It  released 
a  gay  and  hardy  soul.  She  was  the  happiest  thing  in 
the  world.  And  she  was  happy  because  she  was  en- 
larging her  horizon.  She  came  to  know  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men ;  Charley  O'Brien,  the  traffic  cop, 
was  one  of  her  best  friends.  W.  L.  Holtz,  the  Latin 
teacher,  was  another.  Tom  O'Connor,  farmer-poli- 
tician, and  Rev.  J.  H.  J.  Rice,  preacher  and  police 
judge,  and  Frank  Beach,  music  master,  were  her  spe- 
cial friends,  and  all  the  girls,  black  and  white,  above 
the  track  and  below  the  track,  in  Pepville  and  String- 
town,  were  among  her  acquaintances.  And  she  brought 
home  riotous  stones  of  her  adventures.  She  loved  to 
rollick ;  persiflage  was  her  natural  expression  at  home. 


Mary  White  25 

Her  humor  was  a  continual  bubble  of  joy.  She  seemed 
to  think  in  hyperbole  and  metaphor.  She  was  mis- 
chievous wtihout  malice,  as  full  of  faults  as  an  old 
shoe.  No  angel  was  Mary  White,  but  an  easy  girl  to 
live  with,  for  she  never  nursed  a  grouch  five  minutes 
in  her  Hfe. 

With  all  her  eagerness  for  the  out-of-doors,  she 
loved  books.  On  her  table  when  she  left  her  room 
were  a  book  by  Conrad,  one  by  Galsworthy,  "Creative 
Chemistry"  by  E.  E.  Slosson,  and  a  Kipling  book.  She 
read  Mark  Twain,  Dickens  and  Kipling  before  she  was 
ten — all  of  their  writings.  Wells  and  Arnold  Ben- 
nett particularly  amused  and  diverted  her.  She  was 
entered  as  a  student  in  Wellesley  in  1922;  was  assis- 
tant editor  of  the  High  School  Annual  this  year,  and 
in  line  for  election  to  the  editorship  of  the  Annual 
next  year.  She  was  a  member  of  the  executive  com- 
mittee of  the  High  School  Y.  W.  C.  A. 

Within  the  last  two  years  she  had  begun  to  be  moved 
by  an  ambition  to  draw.  She  began  as  most  children 
do  by  scribbling  in  her  school  books,  funny  pictures. 
She  bought  cartoon  magazines  and  took  a  course— 7 
rather  casually,  naturally,  for  she  was,  after  all,  a 
child  with  no  strong  purposes — and  this  year  she  tasted 
the  first  fruits  of  success  by  having  her  pictures  ac- 
cepted by  the  High  School  Annual.  But  the  thrill  of 
delight  she  got  when  Mr.  Ecord,  of  the  Normal  An- 


26  William  Allen  White 

nual,  asked  her  to  do  the  cartooning  for  that  book  this 
spring,  was  too  beautiful  for  words.  She  fell  to  her 
work  with  all  her  enthusiastic  heart.  Her  drawings 
were  accepted,  and  her  pride — always  repressed  by  a 
lively  sense  of  the  ridiculousness  of  the  figure  she  was 
cutting — was  a  really  gorgeous  thing  to  see.  No  suc- 
cessful artist  ever  drank  a  deeper  draught  of  satisfac- 
tion than  she  took  from  the  little  fame  her  work  was 
getting  among  her  schoolfellows.  In  her  glory,  she 
almost  forgot  her  horse — but  never  her  car. 

For  she  used  the  car  as  a  jitney  bus.  It  was  her 
social  life.  She  never  had  a  "party"  in  all  her  nearly 
seventeen  years — wouldn't  have  one;  but  she  never 
drove  a  block  in  the  car  in  her  life  that  she  didn't  begin 
to  fill  the  car  with  pick-ups!  Everybody  rode  with 
Mary  White — white  and  black,  old  and  young,  rich 
and  poor,  men  and  women.  She  liked  nothing  better 
than  to  fill  the  car  full  of  long-legged  High  School 
boys  and  an  occasional  girl,  and  parade  the  town.  She 
never  had  a  "date,"  nor  went  to  a  dance,  except  once 
with  her  brother,  Bill,  and  the  "boy  proposition"  didn't 
interest  her — yet.  But  young  people — great  spring- 
breaking,  varnish-cracking,  fender-bending,  door- 
sagging  carloads  of  "kids"  gave  her  great  pleasure. 
Her  zests  were  keen.  But  the  most  fun  she  ever  had 
in  her  life  was  acting  as  chairm.an  of  the  committee 
that  got  up  the  big  turkey  dinner  for  the  poor  folks 


Mary  White  27 

at  the  county  home;  scores  of  pies,  gallons  of  slaw; 
jam,  cakes,  preserves,  oranges  and  a  wilderness  of  tur- 
key were  loaded  in  the  car  and  taken  to  the  county 
home.  And,  being  of  a  practical  turn  of  mind,  she 
risked  her  own  Christmas  dinner  by  staying  to  see  that 
the  poor  folks  actually  got  it  all.  Not  that  she  was  a 
cynic;  she  just  disliked  to  tempt  folks.  While  there 
she  found  a  blind  colored  uncle,  very  old,  who  could 
do  nothing  but  make  rag  rugs,  and  she  rustled  up  from 
her  school  friends  rags  enough  to  keep  him  busy  for  a 
season.  The  last  engagement  she  tried  to  make  was 
to  take  the  guests  at  the  county  home  out  for  a  car 
ride.  And  the  last  endeavor  of  her  life  was  to  try  to 
get  a  rest  room  for  colored  girls  in  the  High  School. 
She  found  one  girl  reading  in  the  toilet,  because  there 
was  no  better  place  for  a  colored  girl  to  loaf,  and  it 
inflamed  her  sense  of  injustice  and  she  became  a 
nagging  harpie  to  those  who,  she  thought,  could 
remedy  the  evil.  The  poor  she  had  always  with  her, 
and  was  glad  of  it.  She  hungered  and  thirsted  for 
righteousness;  and  was  the  most  impious  creature  in 
the  world.  She  joined  the  Congregational  Church  with- 
out consulting  her  parents;  not  particularly  for  her 
soul's  good.  She  never  had  a  thrill  of  piety  in  her 
life,  and  would  have  hooted  at  a  "testimony."  But 
even  as  a  little  child  she  felt  the  church  was  an  agency 
for  helping  people  to  more  of  life's  abundance,  and  she 


28  William  Allen  White 

wanted  to  help.  She  never  wanted  help  for  herself. 
Clothes  meant  little  to  her.  It  was  a  fight  to  get  a 
new  rig  on  her ;  but  eventually  a  harder  fight  to  get  it 
off.  She  never  wore  a  jewel  and  had  no  ring  but  her 
High  School  class  ring,  and  never  asked  for  anything 
but  a  wrist  watch.  She  refused  to  have  her  hair  up; 
though  she  was  nearly  seventeen.  "Mother,"  she  pro- 
tested, "you  don't  know  how  much  I  get  by  with,  in  my 
braided  pigtails,  that  I  could  not  with  my  hair  up." 
Above  every  other  passion  of  her  life  was  her  passion 
not  to  grow  up,  to  be  a  child.     The  tom-boy  in  her. 

t       which  was  big,  seemed  to  loathe  to  be  put  away  for-^ 

I       ever  in  skirts.     She  was  a  Peter  Pan,  who  refused  to 

!       grow  up. 

X^^.^^'^^r  funeral  yesterday  at  the  Congregational  Church 
was  as  she  would  have  wished  it ;  no  singing,  no  flowers 
save  the  big  bunch  of  red  roses  from  her  Brother  Bill's 
Harvard  classmen — Heavens,  how  proud  that  would 
have  made  her!  and  the  red  roses  from  the  Gazette 
force — in  vases  at  her  head  and  feet.  A  short  prayer, 
Paul's  beautiful  essay  on  "Love'^from  the  Thirteenth 
Chapter  of  First  Corinthians,  some  remarks  about  her 
democratic  spirit  by  her  friend,  John  H.  J.  Rice,  pastor 
and  police  judge/ whicK  she  would  have  deprecated  if 
she  couldj^  a  prayer  sent  down  for  her  by  her  friend, 
Carl  Nauyknd  opening  the  service  the  slow,  poignant 
movement  from  Beethoven's  Moonlight  Sonata,  which 


Mary  White  29 

she  loved,  and  closing  the  service  a  cutting  from  the 
joyously  melancholy  first  movement  of  Tschaikowski's 
Pathetic  Symphony,  which  she  liked  to  hear  in  certain 
moods  on  the  phonograph ;  then  the  Lord's  Prayer  by 
her  friends  in  the  High  School. 

That  was  all. 

For  her  pall-bearers  only  her  friends  were  chosen: 
her  Latin  teacher — W.  L.  Holtz ;  her  High  School  prin- 
cipal. Rice  Brown;  her  doctor,  Frank  Foncannon;  her 
friend,  W.  W.  Finney;  her  pal  at  the  Gazette  office, 
.  Walter  Hughes;  and  her  brother  Bill.  It  would  have 
^— 'made  her  smile  to  know  that  her  friend,  Charley 
O'Brien,  the  traffic  cop,  had  been  transferred  from 
Sixth  and  Commercial  to  the  corner  near  the  church 
to  direct  her  friends  who  came  to  bid  her  good-by. 

A  rift  in  the  clouds  in  a  gray  day  threw  a  shaft  of 
sunlight  upon  her  coffin  as  her  nervous,  energetic  little 
body  sank  to  its  last  sleep.  But  the  soul  of  her,  the 
glowing,  gorgeous,  fervent  soul  of  her,  surely  was 
flaming  in  eager  joy  upon  some  other  dawn. 


-\ 


NIAGARA  FALLS 
By  Rupert  Brooke 

The  poet  usually  is  the  best  reporter,  for  he  is  an  observer  not 
merely  accurate  but  imaginative,  self-trained  to  see  subtle  sug- 
gestions, relations  and  similarities.  This  magnificent  bit  of  de- 
scription was  written  by  Rupert  Brooke  as  one  of  the  letters 
sent  to  the  Westminster  Gazette  describing  his  trip  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada  in  1913.  It  is  included  in  the  volume  Letters 
from  America  to  which  Henry  James  contributed  so  afifectionate 
and  desperately  unintelligible  a  preface— one  of  the  last  things 
James  wrote.  Brooke's  notes  on  America  are  well  worth  read- 
ing: they  are  full  of  delightful  and  lively  comments,  though 
sometimes  much  (oh,  very  much!)  too  condescending.  The  last 
paragraph  in  this  essay  is  interesting  in  view  of  subsequent 
history. 

Brooke  was  born  in  1887,  son  of  a  master  at  Rugby  School; 
was  at  King's  College,  Cambridge;  died  of  blood-poisoning  in 
the  ^gean,  April  2Z,   19 15- 

Samuel  Butler  has  a  lot  to  answer  for.  But  for 
him,  a  modern  traveler  could  spend  his  time  peacefully 
admiring  the  scenery  instead  of  feeling  himself  bound 
to  dog  the  simple  and  grotesque  of  the  world  for  the 
sake  of  their  too-human  comments.  It  is  his  fault  if 
a  peasant's  naivete  has  come  to  out*/eigh  the  beauty 
of  rivers,  and  the  remarks  of  clergymen  are  more 
than  mountains.  It  is  very  restful  to  give  up  all  effort 
at  observing  human  nature  and  drawing  social  and 
political  deductions  from  trifles,  and  to  let  oneself 
relapse  into  wide-mouthed  worship  of  the  wonders  of 
nature.    And  this  is  very  easy  at  Niagara.     Niagara 

30 


Niagara  Falls  31 

means  nothing.  It  is  not  leading  anywhere.  It  does 
not  result  from  anything.  It  throws  no  light  on  the 
effects  of  Protection,  nor  on  the  Facility  for  Divorce 
in  America,  nor  on  Corruption  in  Public  Life,  nor  on 
Canadian  character,  nor  even  on  the  Navy  Bill.  It  is 
merely  a  great  deal  of  water  falling  over  some  cliffs. 
But  it  is  very  remarkably  that.  The  human  race,  apt 
as  a  child  to  destroy  what  it  admires,  has  done  its  best 
to  surround  the  Falls  with  every  distraction,  incon- 
gruity, and  vulgarity.  Hotels,  powerhouses,  bridges, 
trams,  picture  post-cards,  sham  legends,  stalls,  booths, 
rifle-galleries,  and  side-shows  frame  them  about.  And 
there  are  Touts.  Niagara  is  the  central  home  and 
breeding-place  for  all  the  touts  of  earth.  There  are 
touts  insinuating,  and  touts  raucous,  greasy  touts, 
brazen  touts,  and  upper-class,  refined,  gentlemanly, 
take-you-by-the-arm  touts;  touts  who  intimidate  and 
touts  who  wheedle;  professionals,  amateurs,  and  dilet- 
tanti, male  and  female;  touts  who  would  photograph  . 
you  with  your  arm  round  a  young  lady  against  a 
faked  background  of  the  sublimest  cataract,  touts  who 
!  would  bully  you  into  cars,  char-a-bancs,  elevators,  or 
tunnels,  or  deceive  you  into  a  carriage  and  pair,  touts 
who  would  sell  you  picture  post-cards,  moccasins,  sham 
Indian  beadwork,  blankets,  tee-pees,  and  crockery,  and 
touts,  finally,  who  have  no  apparent  object  in  the 
world,  but  just  purely,  simply,  merely,  incessantly,  in- 


32  Rupert  Brooke 

defatigably,  and  ineffugibly  to  tout.  And  in  the  midst 
of  all  this,  overwhelming  it  all,  are  the  Falls.  He 
who  sees  them  instantly  forgets  humanity.  They  are 
not  very  high,  but  they  are  overpowering.  They  are 
divided  by  an  island  into  two  parts,  the  Canadian  and 
the  American. 

Half  a  mile  or  so  above  the  Falls,  on  either  side,  the 
water  of  the  great  stream  begins  to  run  more  swiftly 
and  in  confusion.  It  descends  with  ever-growing 
speed.  It  begins  chattering  and  leaping,  breaking  into 
a  thousand  ripples,  throwing  up  joyful  fingers  of  spray. 
Sometimes  it  is  divided  by  islands  and  rocks,  some- 
times the  eye  can  see  nothing  but  a  waste  of  laughing, 
springing,  foamy  waves,  turning,  crossing,  even  seem- 
ing to  stand  for  an  instant  erect,  but  always  borne  im- 
petuously forward  like  a  crowd  of  triumphant  feasters. 
Sit  close  down  by  it,  and  you  see  a  fragment  of  the 
torrent  against  the  sky,  mottled,  steely,  and  foaming, 
leaping  onward  in  far-flung  criss-cross  strands  of 
water.  Perpetually  the  eye  is  on  the  point  of  descry- 
ing a  pattern  in  this  weaving,  and  perpetually  it  is 
cheated  by  change.  In  one  place  part  of  the  flood 
plunges  over  a  ledge  a  few  feet  high  and  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  or  so  long,  in  a  uniform  and  stable  curve.  It  gives 
an  impression  of  almost  military  concerted  movement, 
grown  suddenly  out  of  confusion.  But  it  is  swiftly 
lost   again   in  the  multitudinous    tossing  merriment. 


Niagara  Falls  33 

Here  and  there  a  rock  close  to  the  surface  is  marked 
by  a  white  wave  that  faces  backwards  and  seems  to  be 
rushing  madly  up-stream,  but  is  really  stationary  in 
the  headlong  charge.  But  for  these  signs  of  reluct- 
ance, the  waters  seem  to  fling  themselves  on  with  some 
foreknowledge  of  their  fate,  in  an  ever  wilder  frenzy. 
But  it  is  no  Maeterlinckian  prescience.  They  prove, 
rather,  that  Greek  belief  that  the  great  crashes  are 
preceded  by  a  louder  merriment  and  a  wilder  gaiety. 
Leaping  in  the  sunlight,  careless,  entwining,  clam- 
orously joyful,  the  waves  riot  on  towards  the 
verge. 

But  there  they  change.  As  they  turn  to  the  sheer 
descent,  the  white  and  blue  and  slate  color,  in  the  heart 
of  the  Canadian  Falls  at  least,  blend  and  deepen  to  a 
rich,  wonderful,  luminous  green.  On  the  edge  of  dis- 
aster the  river  seems  to  gather  herself,  to  pause,  to 
lift  a  head  noble  in  ruin,  and  then,  with  a  slow 
grandeur,  to  plunge  into  the  eternal  thunder  and  white 
chaos  below.  Where  the  stream  runs  shallower  it  is 
a  kind  of  violet  color,  but  both  violet  and  green  fray 
and  frill  to  white  as  they  fall.  The  mass  of  water, 
striking  some  ever-hidden  base  of  rock,  leaps  up  the 
whole  two  hundred  feet  again  in  pinnacles  and  domes 
of  spray.  The  spray  falls  back  into  the  lower  river 
once  more ;  all  but  a  little  that  fines  to  foam  and  white 
mist,  which  drifts  in  layers  along  the  air,  graining  it, 


34  Rupert  Brooke 

and  wanders  out  on  the  wind  over  the  trees  and  gar- 
dens and  houses,  and  so  vanishes. 

The  manager  of  one  of  the  great  power-stations 
on  the  banks  of  the  river  above  the  Falls  told  me  that 
the  center  of  the  riverbed  at  the  Canadian  Falls  is 
deep  and  of  a  saucer  shape.  So  it  may  be  possible  to 
fill  this  up  to  a  uniform  depth,  and  divert  a  lot  of  water 
for  the  power-houses.  And  this,  he  said,  would  supply 
the  need  for  more  power,  which  will  certainly  soon 
arise,  without  taking  away  from  the  beauty  of  Niagara. 
This  is  a  handsome  concession  of  the  utilitarians  to 
ordinary  sight-seers.  Yet,  I  doubt  if  we  shall  be  satis- 
fied. The  real  secret  of  the  beauty  and  terror  of  the 
Falls  is  not  their  height  or  width,  but  the  feeling  of 
colossal  power  and  of  unintelligible  disaster  caused  by 
the  plunge  of  that  vast  body  of  water.  If  that  were 
taken  away,  there  would  be  little  visible  change,  but 
the  heart  would  be  gone. 

The  American  Falls  do  not  inspire  this  feeling  in 
the  same  way  as  the  Canadian.  It  is  because  they  are 
less  in  volume,  and  because  the  water  does  not  fall  so 
much  into  one  place.  By  comparison  their  beauty  is 
almost  delicate  and  fragile.  They  are  extraordinarily 
level,  one  long  curtain  of  lacework  and  woven  foam. 
Seen  from  opposite,  when  the  sun  is  on  them,  they 
are  blindingly  white,  and  the  clouds  of  spray  show 
dark  against  them?    With  both  Falls  the  color  of  the 


Niagara  Falls  35 

water  is  the  ever-altering  wonder.  Greens  and  blues^ 
purples  and  whites,  melt  into  one  another,  fade,  and 
come  again,  and  change  with  the  changing  sun.  Some- 
times they  are  as  richly  diaphanous  as  a  precious  stone, 
and  glow  from  within  with  a  deep,  inexplicable  light. 
Sometimes  the  white  intricacies  of  dropping  foam  be- 
come opaque  and  creamy.  And  always  there  are  the 
rainbows.  If  you  come  suddenly  upon  the  Falls  from 
above,  a  great  double  rainbow,  very  vivid,  spanning 
the  extent  of  spray  from  top  to  bottom,  is  the  first 
thing  you  see.  If  you  wander  along  the  cliff  opposite,  a 
bow  springs  into  being  in  the  American  Falls,  accom- 
panies you  courteously  on  your  walk,  dwindles  and  dies 
as  the  mist  ends,  and  awakens  again  as  you  reach  the 
Canadian  tumult.  And  the  bold  traveler  who  attempts 
the  trip  under  the  American  Falls  sees,  when  he  dare 
open  his  eyes  to  anything,  tiny  baby  rainbows,  some 
four  or  five  yards  in  span,  leaping  from  rock  to  rock 
among  the  foam,  and  gamboling  beside  him,  barely 
out  of  hand's  reach,  as  he  goes.  One  I  saw  in  that 
place  was  a  complete  circle,  such  as  I  have  never  seen 
before,  and  so  near  that  I  could  put  my  foot  on  it.  It 
is  3  terrifying  journey,  beneath  and  behind  the  Falls. 
The  senses  are  battered  and  bewildered  by  the  thunder 
of  the  water  and  the  assault  of  wind  and  spray;  or 
rather,  the  sound  is  not  of  falling  water,  but  merely 
of  falling;  a  noise  of  unspecified  ruin.    So,  if  you  are 


36  Rupert  Brooke 

close  behind  the  endless  clamor,  the  sight  cannot  recog- 
nize liquid  in  the  masses  that  hurl  past.  You  are  dimly 
and  pitifully  aware  that  sheets  of  light  and  darkness 
are  falling  in  great  curves  in  front  of  you.  Dull 
omnipresent  foam  washes  the  face.  Farther  away,  in 
the  roar  and  hissing,  clouds  of  spray  seem  literally  to 
slide  down  some  invisible  plane  of  air. 

Beyond  the  foot  of  the  Falls  the  river  is  like  a 
slipping  floor  of  marble,  green  with  veins  of  dirty 
white,  made  by  the  scum  that  was  foam.  It  slides  very 
quietly  and  slowly  down  for  a  mile  or  two,  sullenly 
exhausted.  Then  it  turns  to  a  dull  sage  green,  and 
hurries  more  swiftly,  smooth  and  omnious.  As  the 
walls  of  the  ravine  close  in,  trouble  stirs,  and  the 
waters  boil  and  eddy.  These  are  the  lower  rapids,  a 
sight  more  terrifying  than  the  Falls,  because  less  in- 
telligible. Close  in  its  bands  of  rock  the  river  surges 
tumultuously  forward,  writhing  and  leaping  as  if  in- 
spired by  a  demon.  It  is  pressed  by  the  straits  into  a 
visibly  convex  form.  Great  planes  of  water  slide 
past.  Sometimes  it  is  thrown  up  into  a  pinnacle  of 
foam  higher  than  a  house,  or  leaps  with  incredible 
speed  from  the  crest  of  one  vast  wave  to  another,  along 
the  shining  curve  between,  like  the  spring  of  a  wild 
beast.  Its  motion  continually  suggests  muscular  ac- 
tion. The  power  manifest  in  these  rapids  moves  one 
with  a  different  sense  of  awe  and  terror  from  that  of 


Niagara  Falls  37 

the  Falls.  Here  the  inhuman  life  and  strength  are 
spontaneous,  active,  almost  resolute;  masculine  vigor 
compared  with  the  passive  gigantic  power,  female,  help- 
less and  overwhelming,  of  the  Falls.  A  place  of  fear. 
One  is  drawn  back,  strangely,  to  a  contemplation  of 
the  Falls,  at  every  hour,  and  especially  by  night,  when 
the  cloud  of  spray  becomes  an  immense  visible  ghost, 
straining  and  wavering  high  above  the  river,  white  and 
pathetic  and  translucent.  The  Victorian  lies  very  close 
below  the  surface  in  every  man.  There  one  can  sit 
and  let  great  cloudy  thoughts  of  destiny  and  the  pas- 
sage of  empires  drift  through  the  mind;  for  such 
dreams  are  at  home  by  Niagara.  I  could  not  get  out 
of  my  mind  the  thought  of  a  friend,  who  said  that  thf 
rainbows  over  the  Falls  were  like  the  arts  and  beauty 
and  goodness,  with  regard  to  the  stream  of  life- 
caused  by  it,  thrown  upon  its  spray,  but  unable  to  stay 
or  direct  or  affect  it,  and  ceasing  when  it  ceased.  In 
all  comparisons  that  rise  in  the  heart,  the  river,  with 
Its  multitudinous  waves  and  its  single  current,  likens 
itself  to  a  life,  whether  of  an  individual  or  of  a  com- 
munity. A  man's  life  is  of  many  flashing  moments, 
and  yet  one  stream;  a  nation's  flows  through  all  its 
citizens,  and  yet  is  more  than  they.  In  such  places,  one 
is  aware,  with  an  almost  insupportable  and  yet  com- 
forting certitude,  that  both  men  and  nations  are  hur- 
ried onwards  to  their  ruin  or  ending  as  inevitably  as 


38  Rupert  Brooke 

this  dark  flood.  Some  go  down  to  it  unreluctant,  and 
meet  it,  like  the  river,  not  without  nobility.  And  as 
incessant,  as  inevitable,  and  as  unavailing  as  the  spray 
that  hangs  over  the  Falls,  is  the  white  cloud  of  human 
crying.  .  .  .  With  some  such  thoughts  does  the  plati- 
tudinous heart  win  from  the  confusion  and  thunder 
of  a  Niagara  peace  that  the  quietest  plains  or  most 
stable  hills  can  never  give. 


"A  CLERGYMAN" 
By  Max  Beerbohm 

Max  Beerbohm,  I  dare  say  (and  I  believe  it  has  been  said 
before),  is  the  most  subtly  gifted  English  essayist  since  Charles 
Lamb.  It  is  not  surprising  that  he  has  Cnow  for  many  years) 
been  referred  to  as  "the  incomparable  Max,"  for  what  other  con- 
temporary has  never  once  missed  fire,  never  failed  to  achieve 
perfection  in  the  field  of  his  choice?  Whether  in  caricature, 
sTiort  story,  fable,  parody,  or  essay,^  he  has  always  been  con- 
summate in  grace,  tact,  insouciant  airy  precision.  I  hope  you 
will  not  miss  "No.  2  The  Pines"  (in  And  Even  Now,  from  which 
this  selection  also  comes),  a  reminiscence  of  his  first  visit  to 
Swinburne  in  1899.  That  beautiful  (there  is  no  other  word) 
essay  shows  an  even  ampler  range  of  Mr.  Beerbohm's  powers: 
a  tenderness  and  lovely  grace  that  remind  one,  almost  against 
belief,  that  the  gay  youth  of  the  '90's  now  mellows  deliciously 
with  the  end  of  the  fifth  decade.  He  was  so  enormously  old 
in  1896,  when  he  published  his  first  book  and  called  it  his  Works; 
he  seems  much  younger  now :  he  is  having  his  first  childhood. 

This  portrait  of  the  unfortunate  cleric  annihilated  by  Dr. 
Johnson  is  a  triumphant  example  of  the  skill  with  which  a 
perfect  artist  can  manoeuver  a  trifle,  carved  like  an  ivory  trinket; 
in  such  hands,  subtlety  never  becomes^  mere  tenuity. 

Max  Beerbohm  was  born  in  London  in  1872;  studied  at  Char- 
terhouse School  and  Merton  College,  Oxford;  and  was  a  bril- 
liant figure  in  the  Savoy  and  Yellow  Book  circles  by  the  time 
he  was  twenty-four.  His  genius  is  that  of  the  essay  in  its 
purest  distillation:  a  clear  cross-section  of  life  as  seen  through 
the  lens  of  self;  the  pure  culture  (in  the  biological  sense)  of 
observing  personality. 

I  have  often  wondered  how  it  came  about  (though  the  matter 
is  wholly  nonpertinent)  that  Mr.  Beerbohm  married  an  Ameri- 
can lady — quite  a  habit  with  English  essayists,  by  the  way: 
Hilaire  Belloc  and  Bertrand  Russell  did  likewise.  Who's  Who 
says  she  was  from  Memphis,  which  adds  lustre  to  that  admira- 
ble city. 

He  now  lives  in  Italy. 

Fragmentary,  pale,  momentary;  almost  nothing; 
glimpsed  and  gone;  as  it  were,  a  faint  human  hand 
thrust  up,  never  to  reappear,  from  beneath  the  rolling 

39 


40  Max  Beerbohm 

waters  of  Time,  he  forever  haunts  my  memory  and 
solicits  my  weak  imagination.  Nothing  is  told  of  him 
but  that  once,  abruptly,  he  asked  a  question,  and  re- 
ceived an  answer. 

This  was  on  the  afternoon  of  April  7th,  1778,  at 
Streatham,  in  the  well-appointed  house  of  Mr.  Thrale. 
Johnson,  on  the  morning  of  that  day,  had  entertained 
Boswell  at  breakfast  in  Bolt  Court,  and  invited  him  to 
dine  at  Thrale  Hall.  The  two  took  coach  and  arrived 
early.  It  seems  that  Sir  John  Pringle  had  asked  Bos- 
well to  ask  Johnson  "what  were  the  best  English 
sermons  for  style.*'  In  the  interval  before  dinner, 
accordingly,  Boswell  reeled  off  the  names  of  several 
divines  whose  prose  might  or  might  not  win  commen- 
dation. "Atterbury?'*  he  suggested.  "Johnson  :  Yes, 
Sir,  one  of  the  best.  Boswell  :  Tillotson  ?  Johnson  : 
Why,  not  now.  I  should  not  advise  any  one  to  imi- 
tate Tillotson's  style;  though  I  don't  know;  I  should 
be  cautious  of  censuring  anything  that  has  been  ap- 
plauded by  so  many  suffrages. — South  is  one  of  the 
best,  if  you  except  his  peculiarities,  and  his  violence, 
and  sometimes  coarseness  of  language. — Seed  has  a 
very  fine  style;  but  he  is  not  very  theological.  Jortin*s 
sermons  are  very  elegant.  Sherlock's  style,  too,  is 
very  elegant,  though  he  has  not  made  it  his  principal 
study. — And  you  may  add  Smalridge.     Boswell:  I 


^^A  Clergyman*'  41 

like  Ogden's  Sermons  on  Prayer  very  much,  both  for 
neatness  of  style  and  subtihty  of  reasoning.  Johnson  : 
I  should  like  to  read  all  that  Ogden  has  written. 
Boswell:  What  I  want  to  know  is,  what  sermons 
afford  the  best  specimen  of  English  pulpit  eloquence." 
Johnson  :  We  have  no  sermons  addressed  to  the  pas- 
sions, that  are  good  for  anything;  if  you  mean  that 
kind  of  eloquence.  A  Clergyman,  whose  name  I  do 
not  recollect :  Were  not  Dodd's  sermons  addressed 
to  the  passions?  Johnson:  They  were  nothing.  Sir, 
be  they  addressed  to  what  they  may.'* 

The  suddenness  of  it!  Bang! — and  the  rabbit  that 
had  popped  from  its  burrow  was  no  more. 

I  know  not  which  is  the  more  startling — the  debut 
of  the  unfortunate  clergyman,  or  the  instantaneousness 
of  his  end.  Why  hadn't  Boswell  told  us  there  was  a 
clergyman  present?  Well,  we  may  be  sure  that  so 
careful  and  acute  an  artist  had  some  good  reason. 
And  I  suppose  the  clergyman  was  left  to  take  us  una- 
wares because  just  so  did  he  take  the  company.  Had 
we  been  told  he  was  there,  we  might  have  expected 
that  sooner  or  later  he  would  join  in  the  conversation* 
He  would  have  had  a  place  in  our  minds.  We  may 
assume  that  in  the  minds  of  the  company  around 
Johnson  he  had  no  place.  He  sat  forgotten,  over- 
looked;  so  that  his  self-assertion  startled  every  one 


42  Max  Beerbohm 

just  as  on  Boswell's  page  it  startles  us.  In  John- 
son's massive  and  magnetic  presence  only  some  very 
remarkable  man,  such  as  Mr.  Burke,  was  sharply  dis- 
tinguishable from  the  rest.  Others  might,  if  they 
had  something  in  them,  stand  out  slightly.  This  un- 
fortunate clergyman  may  have  had  something  in  him, 
but  I  judge  that  he  lacked  the  gift  of  seeming  as  if  he 
had.  That  deficiency,  however,  does  not  account  for 
the  horrid  fate  that  befell  him.  One  of  Johnson's 
strongest  and  most  inveterate  feelings  was  his  ven- 
eration for  the  Cloth.  To  any  one  in  Holy  Orders 
he  habitually  listened  with  a  grace  and  charming  def- 
erence. To-day,  moreover,  he  was  in  excellent  good 
humor.  He  was  at  the  Thrales',  where  he  so  loved 
to  be;  the  day  was  fine;  a  fine  dinner  was  in  close 
prospect;  and  he  had  had  what  he  always  declared 
to  be  the  sum  of  human  felicity — a  ride  in  a  coach. 
Nor  was  there  in  the  question  put  by  the  clergyman 
anything  likely  to  enrage  him.  Dodd  was  one  whom 
Johnson  had  befriended  in  adversity;  and  it  had  al- 
ways been  agreed  that  Dodd  in  his  pulpit  was  very 
emotional.  What  drew  the  blasting  flash  must  have 
been  not  the  question  itself,  but  the  manner  in  which 
it  was  asked.  And  I  think  we  can  guess  what  that 
manner  was. 

Say  the  words  aloud:  "Were  not  Dodd's  sermons 
addressed  to  the  passions?"    They  are  words  which, 


''A  Clergyman"  43 

if  you  have  any  dramatic  and  histrionic  sense,  cannot 
be  said  except  in  a  high,  thin  voice. 

You  may,  from  sheer  perversity,  utter  them  in  a 
rich  and  sonorous  baritone  or  bass.  But  if  you  do  so, 
they  sound  utterly  unnatural.  To  make  them  carry 
the  conviction  of  human  utterance,  you  have  no  choice: 
you  must  pipe  them. 

Remember,  now,  Johnson  was  very  deaf.  Even  the 
people  whom  he  knew  well,  the  people  to  whose  voices 
he  was  accustomed,  had  to  address  him  very  loudly. 
It  is  probable  that  this  unregarded,  young,  shy  clergy- 
man, when  at  length  he  suddenly  mustered  courage  to 
'cut  in,'  let  his  high,  thin  voice  soar  too  high,  inso- 
much that  it  was  a  kind  of  scream.  On  no  other 
hypothesis  can  we  account  for  the  ferocity  with  which 
Johnson  turned  and  rended  him.  Johnson  didn't,  we 
may  be  sure,  mean  to  be  cruel.  The  old  lion,  startled, 
just  struck  out  blindly.  But  the  force  of  paw  and 
claws  was  not  the  less  lethal.  We  have  endless  testi- 
mony to  the  strength  of  Johnson's  voice ;  and  the  very 
cadence  of  those  words,  "They  were  nothing,  Sir,  be 
they  addressed  to  what  they  may,"  convinces  me  that 
the  old  lion's  jaws  never  gave  forth  a  louder  roar. 
Boswell  does  not  record  that  there  was  any  further 
conversation  before  the  announcement  of  dinner.  Per- 
haps the  whole  company  had  been  temporarily 
deafened.    But  I  am  not  bothering  about  them.    My 


44  Max  Beerbohm 

heart  goes  out  to  the  poor  dear  clergyman  exclu- 
sively. 

I  said  a  moment  ago  that  he  was  young  and  shy; 
and  I  admit  that  I  slipped  those  epithets  in  without 
having  justified  them  to  you  by  due  process  of  in- 
duction. Your  quick  mind  will  have  already  supplied 
what  I  omitted.  A  man  with  a  high,  thin  voice,  and 
without  power  to  impress  any  one  with  a  sense  of  his 
importance,  a  man  so  null  in  effect  that  even  the  reten- 
tive mind  of  Boswell  did  not  retain  his  very  name, 
would  assuredly  not  be  a  self-confident  man.  Even 
if  he  were  not  naturally  shy,  social  courage  would 
soon  have  been  sapped  in  him,  and  would  in  time 
have  been  destroyed,  by  experience.  That  he  had  not 
yet  given  himself  up  as  a  bad  job,  that  he  still  had 
faint  wild  hopes,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  he  did 
snatch  the  opportunity  for  asking  that  question.  He 
must,  accordingly,  have  been  young.  Was  he  the 
curate  of  the  neighboring  church?  I  think  so.  It 
would  account  for  his  having  been  invited.  I  see 
him  as  he  sits  there  listening  to  the  great  Doctor's 
pronouncement  on  Atterbury  and  those  others.  He 
sits  on  the  edge  of  a  chair  in  the  background.  He  has 
colorless  eyes,  fixed  earnestly,  and  a  face  almost  as 
pale  as  the  clerical  bands  beneath  his  somewhat  reced- 
ing chin.  His  forehead  is  high  and  narrow,  his  hair 
mouse-colored.     His  hands  are  clasped  tight  before 


''A  Clergyman"  45 

him,  the  knuckles  standing  out  sharply.  This  con- 
striction does  not  mean  that  he  is  steeling  himself  to 
speak.  He  has  no  positive  intention  of  speaking. 
Very  much,  nevertheless,  is  he  wishing  in  the  back  of 
his  mind  that  he  could  say  something — something 
whereat  the  great  Doctor  would  turn  on  him  and  say, 
after  a  pause  for  thought,  "Why,  yes,  Sir.  That  is 
most  justly  observed"  or  **Sir,  this  has  never  occurred 
to  me.  I  thank  you" — thereby  fixing  the  observer  for- 
ever high  in  the  esteem  of  all.  And  now  in  a  flash  the 
chance  presents  itself.  "We  have,"  shouts  Johnson, 
"no  sermons  addressed  to  the  passions,  that  are  good 
for  anything."  I  see  the  curate's  frame  quiver  with 
sudden  impulse,  and  his  mouth  fly  open,  and — ^no,  I 
can't  bear  it,  I  shut  my  eyes  and  ears.  But  audible, 
even  so,  is  something  shrill,  followed  by  something 
thunderous. 

Presently  I  reopen  my  eyes.  The  crimson  has  not 
yet  faded  from  that  young  face  yonder,  and  slowly 
down  either  cheek  falls  a  glistening  tear.  Shades  of 
Atterbury  and  Tillotson!  Such  weakness  shames  the 
Established  Church.  What  would  Jortin  and  Smal- 
ridge  have  said? — what  Seed  and  South?  And,  by 
the  way,  who  were  they,  these  worthies  ?  It  is  a  solemn 
thought  that  so  little  is  conveyed  to  us  by  names  which 
to  the  palaeo-Georgians  conveyed  so  much.  We  dis- 
cern a  dim,  composite  picture  of  a  big  man  in  a  big 


46  Max  Beerbohm 

wig  and  a  billowing  black  gown,  with  a  big  congre» 
gation  beneath  him.  But  we  are  not  anxious  to  hear 
what  he  is  saying.  We  know  it  is  all  very  elegant. 
We  know  it  will  be  printed  and  be  bound  in  finely- 
tooled  full  calf,  and  no  palseo-Georgian  gentleman's 
library  will  be  complete  without  it.  Literate  people 
in  those  days  were  comparatively  few ;  but,  bating  that, 
one  may  say  that  sermons  were  as  much  in  request  as 
novels  are  to-day.  I  wonder,  will  mankind  continue 
to  be  capricious  ?  It  is  a  very  solemn  thought  indeed 
that  no  more  than  a  hundred-and-fif  ty  years  hence  the 
novelists  of  our  time,  with  all  their  moral  and  political 
and  sociological  outlook  and  influence,  will  perhaps 
shine  as  indistinctly  as  do  those  old  preachers,  with 
all  their  elegance,  now.  "Yes,  Sir,"  some  great  pundit 
may  be  telling  a  disciple  at  this  moment,  "Wells  is 
one  of  the  best.  Galsworthy  is  one  of  the  best,  if 
you  except  his  concern  for  delicacy  of  style.  Mrs. 
Ward  has  a  very  firm  grasp  of  problems,  but  is  not 
very  creational. — Caine's  books  are  very  edifying.  I 
should  like  to  read  all  that  Caine  has  written.  Miss 
Corelli,  too,  is  very  edifying. — And  you  may  add 
Upton  Sinclair."  "What  I  want  to  know,"  says  the 
disciple,  "is,  what  English  novels  may  be  selected  as 
specially  enthralling."  The  pundit  answers :  "We  have 
no  novels  addressed  to  the  passions  that  are  good 
for  anything,  if  you  mean  that  kind  of  enthralment." 


''A  Clergyman''  47 

And  here  some  poor  wretch  (whose  name  the  disciple 
will  not  remember)  inquires:  "Are  not  Mrs.  Glyn's 
novels  addressed  to  the  passions  ?"  and  is  in  due  form 
annihilated.  Can  it  be  that  a  time  will  come  when 
readers  of  this  passage  in  our  pundit's  Life  will  take 
more  interest  in  the  poor  nameless  wretch  than  in  all 
the  bearers  of  those  great  names  put  together,  being 
no  more  able  or  anxious  to  discriminate  between  (say) 
Mrs.  Ward  and  Mr.  Sinclair  than  we  are  to  set 
Ogden  above  Sherlock,  or  Sherlock  above  Ogden? 
It  seems  impossible.  But  we  must  remember  that 
things  are  not  always  what  they  seem. 

Every  man  illustrious  in  his  day,  however  much  he 
may  be  gratified  by  his  fame,  looks  with  an  eager  eye 
to  posterity  for  a  continuance  of  past  favors,  and 
would  even  live  the  remainder  of  his  life  in  obscurity 
if  by  so  doing  he  could  insure  that  future  generations 
would  preserve  a  correct  attitude  towards  him  forever. 
This  is  very  natural  and  human,  but,  like  so  many  very 
natural  and  human  things,  very  silly.  Tillotson  and 
the  rest  need  not,  after  all,  be  pitied  for  our  neglect 
of  them.  They  either  know  nothing  about  it,  or  are 
above  such  terrene  trifles.  Let  us  keep  our  pity  for 
the  seething  mass  of  divines  who  were  not  elegantly 
verbose,  and  had  no  fun  or  glory  while  they  lasted. 
And  let  us  keep  a  specially  large  portion  for.  le  whose 
lot  was  so  much  worse  than  merely  undistinguished. 


48  Max  Beerbohm 

If  that  nameless  curate  had  not  been  at  the  Thrales' 
that  day,  or,  being  there,  had  kept  the  silence  that  so 
well  became  him,  his  life  would  have  been  drab  enough, 
in  all  conscience.  But  at  any  rate  an  unpromising 
career  would  not  have  been  nipped  in  the  bud.  And 
that  is  what  in  fact  happened,  I'm  sure  of  it.  A  robust 
man  might  have  rallied  under  the  blow.  Not  so  our 
friend.  Those  who  knew  him  in  infancy  had  not  ex- 
pected that  he  would  be  reared.  Better  for  him  had 
they  been  right.  It  is  well  to  grow  up  and  be  orr 
dained,  but  not  if  you  are  delicate  and  very  sensitive, 
and  shall  happen  to  annoy  the  greatest,  the  most 
stentorian  and  roughest  of  contemporary  personages. 
"A  Clergyman"  never  held  up  his  head  or  smiled 
again  after  the  brief  encounter  recorded  for  us  by 
Boswell.  He  sank  into  a  rapid  decline.  Before  the 
next  blossoming  of  Thrale  Hall's  almond  trees  he  was 
no  more.  I  like  to  think  that  he  died  forgiving  Dr. 
Johnson, 


"THE  MAN-O'-WAR^S  'ER  'USBAND" 
By  David  W.  Bone 

Those  who  understand  something  of  a  sailor's  feeling  for  his 
ship  will  appreciate  the  restraint  with  which  Captain  Bone  de- 
scribes the  loss  of  the  Cameronia,  his  command,  torpedoed  in 
the  Mediterranean  during  the  War.  You  will  notice  (forgive 
us  for  pointing  out  these  things)  how  quietly  the  quoted  title 
pays  tribute  to  the  gallantry  of  the  destroyers  that  stood  by  the 
sinking  ship;  and  the  heroism  of  the  chief  officer's  death  is  not 
less  moving  because  told  in  two  sentences.  This  superb  picture 
of  a  sea  tragedy  is  taken  from  Merchantmen-at-Arms,  a  history 
of  the  British  Merchants'  Service  during  the  War;  a  book  of 
enthralling  power  and  truth,  illustrated  by  the  author's  brother, 
Muirhead  Bone,  one  of  the  greatest  of  living  etchers. 

David  William  Bone  was  born  in  Partick  (near  Glasgow) 
in  1873;  his  father  was  a  well-known  Glasgow  journalist;  his 
great-grandfather  was  a  boyhood  companion  of  Robert  Burns. 
Bone  went  to  sea  as  an  apprentice  in  the  City  of  Florence,  an 
old-time  square-rigger,  at  the  age  of  fifteen;  he  has  been  at 
sea  ever  since.  He  is  now  master  of  S.S.  Columbia  of  the 
Anchor  Line,  a  well-known  ship  in  New  York  Harbor,  as  she 
has  carried  passengers  between  the  Clyde  and  the  Hudson  for 
more  than  twenty  years.  Captain  Bone's  fine  sea  tale,  The  Brass- 
bounder,  published  in  1910,  has  become  a  classic  of  the  square- 
sail  era;  his  Broken  Stowage  (1915)  is  a  collection  of  shorter 
sea  sketches.  In  the  long  roll  of  great  writers  who  have  re- 
flected the  simplicity  and  severity  of  sea  life,  Captain  Bone 
will  take  a  permanent  and  honorable  place. 

A  SENSE  of  security  is  difficult  of  definition.  Largely, 
It  is  founded  upon  habit  and  association.  It  is  induced 
and  maintained  by  familiar  surroundings.  On  board 
ship,  in  a  small  world  of  our  own,  we  seem  to  be 
contained  by  the  boundaries  of  the  bulwarks,  to  be 
sailing  beyond  the  influences  of  the  land  and  of  other 
ships.     The  sea  is  the  same  we  have  known  for  so 

49 


50  David  W.  Bone 

long.  Every  item  of  our  ship  fitment — the  trim  ar- 
rangement of  the  decks,  the  set  and  rake  of  mast  and 
funnel,  even  the  furnishings  of  our  cabinr — ^has  the 
power  of  impressing  a  stable  feeling  of  custom,  nor- 
mal ship  life,  safety.  It  requires  an  effort  of  thought 
to  recall  that  in  their  homely  presence  we  are  endan- 
gered. Relating  his  experiences  after  having  been 
mined  and  his  ship  sunk,  a  master  confided  that  the 
point  that  impressed  him  most  deeply  was  when  he 
went  to  his  room  for  the  confidential  papers  and  saw 
the  cabin  exactly  in  everyday  aspect — his  longshore 
clothes  suspended  from  the  hooks,  his  umbrella  stand- 
ing in  a  corner  as  he  had  placed  it  on  coming  aboard. 

Soldiers  on  service  are  denied  this  aid  to  assur- 
ance. Unlike  us,  they  cannot  carry  their  home  with 
them  to  the  battlefields.  All  their  scenes  and  sur- 
roundings are  novel;  they  may  only  draw  a  reliance 
and  comfort  from  the  familiar  presence  of  their  com- 
rades. At  sea  in  a  ship  there  is  a  yet  greater  incite- 
ment to  their  disquiet.  The  movement,  the  limitless 
sea,  the  distance  from  the  land,  cannot  be  ignored. 
The  atmosphere  that  is  so  familiar  and  comforting 
to  us,  is  to  many  of  them  an  environment  of  dread 
possibilities. 

It  is  with  some  small  measure  of  this  sense  of  secu- 
rity— tempered  by  our  knowledge  of  enemy  activity 
in  these  waters — we  pace  the  bridge.     .Anxiety  is  not 


''The  Man-o'-War's  'Er  'Usband"        51 

wholly  absent.  Some  hours  past,  we  saw  small  flot- 
sam that  may  have  come  from  the  decks  of  a  French 
mail  steamer,  torpedoed  three  days  ago.  The  passing 
of  the  derelict  fittings  aroused  some  disquiet,  but  the 
steady  routine  of  our  progress  and  the  constant  friendly 
presence  of  familiar  surroundings  has  effect  in  allay- 
ing immediate  fears.  The  rounds  of  the  bridge  go  on 
— the  writing  of  the  log,  the  tapping  of  the  glass,  the 
small  measures  that  mark  the  passing  of  our  sea-hours. 
Two  days  out  from  Marseilles — and  all  well!  In 
another  two  days  we  should  be  approaching  the  Canal, 
and  then — to  be  clear  of  ^submarine  waters'  for  a 
term.  Fine  weather!  A  light  wind  and  sea  accom- 
pany us  for  the  present,  but  the  filmy  glare  of  the  sun, 
now  low,  and  a  backward  movement  of  the  glass  fore- 
tells a  break  ere  long.  We  are  steaming  at  high  speed 
to  make  the  most  of  the  smooth  sea.  Ahead,  on  each 
bow,  our  two  escorting  destroyers  conform  to  the 
angles  of  our  zigzag — spurring  out  and  swerving  with 
the  peculiar  "thrown-around'*  movement  of  their  class. 
Look-out  is  alert  and  in  numbers.  Added  to  the  watch 
of  the  ship's  crew,  military  signalers  are  posted;  the 
boats  swung  outboard  have  each  a  party  of  troops  on 
guard. 

An  alarmed  cry  from  aloft — a  half -uttered  order 
to  the  steersman — an  explosion,  low  down  in  the  bowels 
of  the  ship,  that  sets  her  reeling  in  her  stride ! 


52  David  W ,  Bone 

The  upthrow  comes  swiftly  on  the  moment  of  im- 
pact. Hatches,  coal,  a  huge  column  of  solid  water  go 
skyward  in  a  hurtling  mass  to  fall  in  torrent  on  the 
bridge.  Part  of  a  human  body  strikes  the  awning 
spars  and  hangs — watch-keepers  are  borne  to  the  deck 
by  the  weight  of  water — the  steersman  falls  limply 
over  the  wheel  with  blood  pouring  from  a  gash  on  his 
forehead.  .  .  .  Then  silence  for  a  stunned  half-minute, 
with  only  the  thrust  of  the  engines  marking  the  heart- 
beats of  the  stricken  ship. 

Uproar!  Most  of  our  men  are  young  recruits', 
they  have  been  but  two  days  on  the  sea.  The  tor- 
pedo has  gone  hard  home  at  the  very  weakest  hour 
of  our  calculated  drill.  The  troops  are  at  their  even- 
ing meal  when  the  blow  comes,  the  explosion  killing 
many  outright.  We  had  counted  on  a  proportion  of 
the  troops  being  on  the  deck,  a  steadying  number  to 
balance  the  sudden  rush  from  below  that  we  foresaw 
in  emergency.  Hurrying  from  the  mess-decks  as  en- 
joined, the  quick  movement  gathers  way  and  intensity : 
the  decks  become  jammed  by  the  pressure,  the  gang- 
ways and  passages  are  blocked  in  the  struggle.  There 
is  the  making  of  a  panic — tuned  by  their  outcry,  *'God! 
O  God!  0  Christ r  The  swelling  murmur  is  neUher 
excited  nor  agonized — rather  the  dull,  hopeless  expres- 
sion of  despair. 

The  officer  commanding  troops  has  come  on  the 


''The  Man-o'-Wa/s  'Er  'Usband''        53 

bridge  at  the  first  alarm.  His  juniors  have  oppor- 
tunity to  take  their  stations  before  the  struggling  mass 
reaches  to  the  boats.  The  impossibility  of  getting 
among  the  men  on  the  lower  decks  makes  the  mili- 
tary officers'  efforts  to  restore  confidence  difficult. 
They  are  aided  from  an  unexpected  quarter.  The 
bridge-boy  makes  unofficial  use  of  our  megaphone. 
"Hey!  Steady  up  you  men  doon  therr,"  he  shouts. 
"Ye'll  no'  dae  ony  guid  fur  yersels  croodin'  th'  led- 
dersr 

We  could  not  have  done  it  as  well.  The  lad  is 
plainly  in  sight  to  the  crowd  on  the  decks.  A  small 
boy,  undersized.  "Steady  up  doon  therr !"  The  effect 
is  instant.  Noise  there  still  is,  but  the  movement  is 
arrested. 

The  engines  are  stopped — we  are  now  beyond  range 
of  a  second  torpedo — and  steam  thunders  in  exhaust, 
making  our  efforts  to  control  movements  by  voice  im- 
possible. At  the  moment  of  the  impact  the  destroyers 
have  swung  round  and  are  casting  here  and  there 
like  hounds  on  the  scent:  the  dull  explosion  of  a 
depth-charge — then  another,  rouses  a  fierce  hope  that 
we  are  not  unavenged.  The  force  of  the  explosion  has 
broken  connections  to  the  wireless  room,  but  the  aerial 
still  holds  and,  when  a  measure  of  order  on  the  boat- 
deck  allows,  we  send  a  message  of  our  peril  broadcast 
There  is  no  doubt  in  our  minds  of  the  outcome.    Our 


54  David  W,  Bone 

bows,  drooping  visibly,  tell  that  we  shall  not  float  long. 
We  have  nearly  three  thousand  on  board.  There  are 
boats  for  sixteen  hundred — then  rafts.  Boats — rafts 
— and  the  glass  is  falling  at  a  rate  that  shows  bad 
weather  over  the  western  horizon ! 

Our  drill,  that  provided  for  lowering  the  boats  with 
only  half-complements  in  them,  will  not  serve.  We 
pass  orders  to  lower  away  in  any  condition,  however 
overcrowded.  The  way  is  off  the  ship,  and  it  is  with 
some  apprehension  we  watch  the  packed  boats  that 
drop  away  from  the  davit  heads.  The  shrill  ring  of 
the  block-sheaves  indicates  a  tension  that  is  not  far 
from  breaking-point.  Many  of  the  life-boats  reach 
the  water  safely  with  their  heavy  burdens,  but  the 
strain  on  the  tackles — far  beyond  their  working  load 
— is  too  great  for  all  to  stand  to  it.  Two  boats  go 
down  by  the  run.  The  men  in  them  are  thrown  vio- 
lently to  the  water,  where  they  float  in  the  wash  and 
shattered  planking.  A  third  dangles  from  the  after 
fall,  having  shot  her  manning  out  at  parting  of  the 
forward  tackle.  Lowered  by  the  stern,  she  rights, 
disengages,  and  drifts  aft  with  the  men  clinging  to 
the  life-lines.  We  can  make  no  attempt  to  reach  the 
men  in  the  water.  Their  life-belts  are  sufficient  to 
keep  them  affoat:  the  ship  is  going  down  rapidly  by 
the  head,  and  there  remains  the  second  line  of  boats 
to  be  hoisted  and  swung  over.    The  chief  officer,  paus- 


''The  Man-o'-War's  'Er  'Usband''        55 

ing  in  his  quick  work,  looks  to  the  bridge  inquiringly, 
as  though  to  ask,  "How  long?"  The  fingers  of  two 
hands  suffice  to  mark  our  estimate. 

The  decks  are  now  angled  to  the  deepen hig  pitch 
of  the  bows.  Pumps  are  utterly  inadequate  to  make 
impression  on  the  swift  inflow.  The  chief  engineer 
comes  to  the  bridge  with  a  hopeless  report.  It  is  only 
a  question  of  time.  How  long?  Already  the  water 
is  lapping  at  a  level  of  the  foredeck.  Troops  massed 
there  and  on  the  forecastle-head  are  apprehensive:  it 
is  indeed  a  wonder  that  their  officers  have  held  them  for 
so  long.  The  commanding  officer  sets  example  by  a 
cool  nonchalance  that  we  envy.  Posted  with  us  on  the 
bridge,  his  quick  eyes  note  the  flood  surging  in  the 
pent  'tween-decks  below,  from  which  his  men  have 
removed  the  few  wounded.  The  dead  are  left  to  the 
sea. 

Help  comes  as  we  had  expected  it  would.  Leaving 
Nemesis  to  steam  fast  circles  round  the  sinking 
ship.  Rifleman  swings  in  and  brings  up  alongside 
at  the  forward  end.  Even  in  our  fear  and  anxiety 
and  distress,  we  cannot  but  admire  the  precision  of 
the  destroyer  captain's  manoeuver — the  skilful  avoid- 
ance of  our  crowded  life-boats  and  the  men  in  the 
water — the  sudden  stoppage  of  her  way  and  the  cant 
that  brings  her  to  a  standstill  at  the  lip  of  our  brim- 
ming decks.     The  troops  who  have  stood  so  well  to 


56  David  W,  Bone 

orders  have  their  reward  in  an  easy  leap  to  safety. 
Quickly  the  foredeck  is  cleared.  Rifleman  spurts 
ahead  in  a  rush  that  sets  the  surrounding  life-boats  to 
eddy  in  her  wash.  She  takes  up  the  circling  high- 
speed patrol  and  allows  her  sister  ship  to  swing  in 
and  embark  a  number  of  our  men. 

It  is  when  the  most  of  the  life-boats  are  gone  we 
realize  fully  the  gallant  service  of  the  destroyers.  There 
remain  the  rafts,  but  many  of  these  have  been  launched 
over  to  aid  the  struggling  men  in  the  water.  Half 
an  hour  has  passed  since  we  were  struck — thirty  min- 
utes of  frantic  endeavor  to  debark  our  men — yet 
still  the  decks  are  thronged  by  a  packed  mass  that 
seems  but  little  reduced.  The  coming  of  the  destroyers 
alters  the  outlook.  Rifleman's  action  has  taken  over 
six  hundred.  A  sensible  clearance!  Nemesis  swings 
in  with  the  precision  of  an  express,  and  the  thud  and 
clatter  of  the  troops  jumping  to  her  deck  sets  up  a 
continuous  drumming  note  of  deliverance.  Alert  and 
confident,  the  naval  men  accept  the  great  risks  of  their 
position.  The  ship*s  bows  are  entered  to  the  water 
at  a  steep  incline.  Every  minute  the  balance  is  weigh- 
ing, casting  her  stern  high  in  the  air.  The  bulkheads 
are  by  now  taking  place  of  keel  and  bearing  the  huge 
weight  of  her  on  the  water.  At  any  moment  she  may 
go  without  a  warning,  to  crash  into  the  light  hull  of 
the  destroyer  and  bear  her  down.    For  all  the  circling 


''The  Man-o'-War's  'Er  'Usband''        57 

watch  of  her  sister  ship,  the  submarine — if  still  he 
lives — may  get  in  a  shot  at  the  standing  target.  It  is 
with  a  deep  relief  we  signal  the  captain  to  bear  off. 
Her  decks  are  jammed  to  the  limit.  She  can  carry 
no  more.  Nemesis  lists  heavily  under  her  burdened 
decks  as  she  goes  ahead  and  clears. 

Forty  minutes!  The  zigzag  clock  in  the  wheel- 
house  goes  on  ringing  the  angles  of  time  and  course 
as  though  we  were  yet  under  helm  and  speed.  For 
a  short  term  we  have  noted  that  the  ship  appears  to 
have  reached  a  point  of  arrest  in  her  foundering 
droop.  She  remains  upright  as  she  has  been  since 
righting  herself  after  the  first  inrush  of  water.  Like 
the  lady  she  always  was,  she  has  added  no  fearsome 
list  to  the  sum  of  our  distress.  The  familiar  bridge, 
on  which  so  many  of  our  safe  sea-days  have  been 
spent,  is  canted  at  an  angle  that  makes  foothold  un- 
easy. She  cannot  remain  for  long  afloat.  The  end 
will  come  swiftly,  without  warning — a  sudden  rup- 
ture of  the  bulkhead  that  is  sustaining  her  weight. 
We  are  not  now  many  left  on  board.  Striving  and 
wrenching  to  man-handle  the  only  remaining  boat — 
rendered  idle  for  want  of  the  tackles  that  have  parted 
on  service  of  its  twin — ^we  succeed  in  pointing  her 
outboard,  and  await  a  further  deepening  of  the  bows 
ere  launching  her.  Of  the  military,  the  officer  com- 
manding, some  few  of  his  juniors,  a  group  of  other 


58  David  W,  Bone 

ranks,  stand  by.  The  senior  officers  of  the  ship,  a 
muster  of  seamen,  a  few  stewards,  are  banded  with 
us  at  the  last.  We  expect  no  further  service  of  the 
destroyers.  The  position  of  the  ship  is  over-menac- 
ing to  any  approach.  They  have  all  they  can  carry. 
Steaming  at  a  short  distance  they  have  the  appear- 
ance of  being  heavily  overloaded ;  each  has  a  stagger- 
ing list  and  lies  low  in  the  water  under  their  deck 
encumbrance.  We  have  only  the  hazard  of  a  quick 
out-throw  of  the  remaining  boat  and  the  chances  of  a 
grip  on  floating  wreckage  to  count  upon. 

On  a  sudden  swift  sheer.  Rifleman  takes  the  risk. 
Unheeding  our  warning  hail,  she  steams  across  the 
bows  and  backs  at  a  high  speed:  her  rounded  stern 
jars  on  our  hull  plates,  a  whaler  and  the  davits  catch 
on  a  projection  and  give  with  the  ring  of  buckling 
steel — she  turns  on  the  throw  of  the  propellers  and 
closes  aboard  with  a  resounding  impact  that  sets  her 
living  deck-load  to  stagger. 

We  lose  no  time.  Scrambling  down  the  life-ropes, 
our  small  company  endeavors  to  get  foothold  on  her 
decks.  The  destroyer  widens  off  at  the  rebound,  but 
by  clutch  of  friendly  hands  the  men  are  dragged 
aboard.  One  fails  to  reach  safety.  A  soldier  loses 
grip  and  goes  to  the  water.  The  chief  officer  follows 
him.  Tired  and  unstrung  as  he  must  be  by  the  de- 
voted labors  of  the  last  half -hour,  he  is  in  no  con- 


"The  Man-o'-War's  'Er  'Usband''        59 

dition  to  effect  a  rescue.  A  sudden  deep  rumble  from 
within  the  sinking  ship  warns  the  destroyer  captain 
to  go  ahead.  We  are  given  no  chance  to  aid  our  ship- 
mates :  the  propellers  tear  the  water  in  a  furious  race 
that  sweeps  them  away,  and  we  draw  off  swiftly  from 
the  side  of  the  ship. 

We  are  little  more  than  clear  of  the  settling  fore- 
end  when  the  last  buoyant  breath  of  Cameronia  is 
overcome.  Nobly  she  has  held  afloat  to  the  debarking 
of  the  last  man.  There  is  no  further  life  in  her. 
Evenly,  steadily,  as  we  had  seen  her  leave  the  launch- 
ing ways  at  Meadowside,  she  goes  down. 


THE  MARKET 
By  William  McFee 

William  McFee's  name  is  associated  with  the  sea,  but  in  his 
writing  he  treats  the  life  of  ships  and  sailors  more  as  a  back- 
ground than  as  the  essential  substance  of  his  tale.  I  have  chosen 
this  brief  and  colorful  little  sketch  to  represent  his  talent  be- 
cause it  is  different  from  the  work  with  which  most  of  his  readers 
are  familiar,  and  because  it  represents  a  mood  very  characteristic 
of  him — an  imaginative  and  observant  treatment  of  the  workings 
of  commerce.  His  interest  in  fruit  is  intimate,  as  he  has  been 
for  some  years  an  engineer  in  the  sea  service  of  the  United 
Fruit  Company,  with  a  Mediterranean  interim — reflected  in  much 
of  his  recent  writing — during  the  War. 

The  publication  of  McFee's  Casuals  of  the  Sea  in  191 6  was 
something  of  an  event  in  the  world  of  books,  and  introduced  to 
the  reading  world  a  new  writer  of  unquestionable  strength  and 
subtlety.  His  earlier  books,  An  Ocean  Tramp  and  Aliens  (both 
republished  since),  had  gone  almost  unnoticed — which,  it  is  safe 
to  say,  will  not  happen  again  to  anything  he  cares  to  publish. 
His  later  books  are  Captain  Maccdoine's  Daughter,  Harbours  of 
Memory,  and  An  Engineer's  Notebook.  He  was  born  at  sea  in 
1881,  the  son  of  a  sea-captain ;  grew  up  in  a  northern  suburb 
of  London,  served  his  apprenticeship  in  a  big  engineering  shop, 
and  has  been  in  ships  most  of  the  time  since  1905. 

There  is  a  sharp,  imperative  rap  on  my  outer  door ; 
a  rap  having  within  its  insistent  urgency  a  shadow  of 
delicate  diffidence,  as  though  the  person  responsible 
were  a  trifle  scared  of  the  performance  and  on  tiptoe 
to  run  away.  I  roll  over  and  regard  the  clock.  Four- 
forty.  One  of  the  dubious  by-products  of  continuous 
service  as  a  senior  assistant  at  sea  is  the  habit  of 
waking  automatically  about  4  a.  m.  This  gives  one  sev- 
eral hours,  when  ashore,  to  meditate  upon  one's  sins, 

60 


The  Market  6i 

frailties,  and  (more  rarely)  triumphs  and  virtues. 
For  a  man  who  gets  up  at  say  four-thirty  is  regarded 
with  aversion  ashore.  His  family  express  themselves 
with  superfluous  vigor.  He  must  lie  still  and  med- 
itate, or  suffer  the  ignominy  of  being  asked  when  he 
is  going  away  again. 

But  this  morning,  in  these  old  Chambers  in  an 
ancient  Inn  buried  in  the  heart  of  London  City,  I 
have  agreed  to  get  up  and  go  out.  The  reason  for 
this  momentous  departure  from  a  life  of  temporary 
but  deliberate  indolence  is  a  lady.  "Cherchez  la 
femme,"  as  the  French  say  with  the  dry  animosity  of 
a  logical  race.  Well,  she  is  not  far  to  seek,  being 
on  the  outside  of  my  heavy  oak  door,  tapping,  as  al- 
ready hinted,  with  a  sharp  insistent  delicacy.  To 
this  romantic  summons  I  reply  with  an  articulate  growl 
of  acquiescence,  and  proceed  to  get  ready.  To  relieve 
the  anxiety  of  any  reader  who  imagines  an  impend- 
ing elopement  it  may  be  stated  in  succinct  truthfulness 
that  we  are  bound  on  no  such  desperate  venture.  Wq 
are  going  round  the  corner  a  few  blocks  up  the  Strand, 
to  Covent  Garden  Market,  to  see  the  arrival  of  the 
metropolitan  supply  of  produce. 

Having  accomplished  a  hasty  toilet,  almost  as  prim- 
itive as  that  favored  by  gentlemen  aroused  to  go  on 
watch,  and  placating  an  occasional  repetition  of  the 
tapping  by  brief  protests  and  reports  of  progress,  I 


62  William  McFee 

take  hat  and  cane,  and  drawing  the  huge  antique  bolts 
of  my  door,  discover  a  young  woman  standing  by  t3ie 
window  looking  out  upon  the  quadrangle  of  the  old 
Inn.  She  is  a  very  decided  young  woman,  who  is 
continually  thinking  out  what  she  calls  "stunts"  for 
articles  in  the  press.  That  is  her  profession,  or  one 
of  her  professions — writing  articles  for  the  press. 
The  other  profession  is  selling  manuscripts,  which  con- 
stitutes the  tender  bond  between  us.  For  the  usual 
agent^s  commission  she  is  selling  one  of  my  manu- 
scripts. Being  an  unattached  and,  as  it  were,  unpro- 
tected male,  she  plans  little  excursions  about  London 
to  keep  me  instructed  and  entertained.  Here  she  is 
attired  in  the  flamboyant  finery  of  a  London  flower- 
girl.  She  is  about  to  get  the  necessary  copy  for  a 
special  article  in  a  morning  paper.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  a  certain  expectant  flash  of  her  bright  black 
Irish  eyes,  she  is  entirely  businesslike.  Commenting 
on  the  beauty  of  an  early  summer  morning  in  town, 
we  descend,  and  passing  out  under  the  ponderous  an- 
cient archway,  we  make  our  leisurely  progress  west- 
ward down  the  Strand. 

London  is  always  beautiful  to  those  who  love  and 
understand  that  extraordinary  microcosm;  but  at  five 
of  a  summer  morning  there  is  about  her  an  exquisite 
quality  of  youthful  fragrance  and  debonair  freshness 
which  goes  to  the  heart.    The  newly-hosed  streets  are 


The  Market  63 

shining  in  the  sunlight  as  though  paved  with  "patines 
of  bright  gold."  Early  'buses  rumble  by  from  neigh- 
boring barns  where  they  have  spent  the  night.  And, 
as  we  near  the  new  Gaiety  Theatre,  thrusting  forward 
into  the  great  rivers  of  traffic  soon  to  pour  round  its 
base  like  some  bold  Byzantine  promontory,  we  see 
Waterloo  Bridge  thronged  with  wagons,  piled  high. 
From  all  quarters  they  are  coming,  past  Charing  Cross 
the  great  wains  are  arriving  from  Paddington  Ter- 
minal, from  the  market-garden  section  of  Middlesex 
and  Surrey.  Down  Wellington  Street  come  carts 
laden  with  vegetables  from  Brentwood  and  Cogge- 
shall,  and  neat  vans  packed  with  crates  of  watercress 
which  grows  in  the  lush  lowlands  of  Suffolk  and  Cam- 
bridgeshire, and  behind  us  are  thundering  huge  four- 
horse  vehicles  from  the  docks,  vehicles  with  peaches 
from  South  Africa,  potatoes  from  the  Canary  Islands, 
onions  from  France,  apples  from  California,  oranges 
from  the  West  Indies,  pineapples  from  Central 
America,  grapes  from  Spain  and  bananas  from 
Colombia. 

We  turn  in  under  an  archway  behind  a  theatre 
and  adjacent  to  the  stage-door  of  the  Opera  House. 
The  booths  are  rapidly  filling  with  produce.  Gentle- 
men in  long  alpaca  coats  and  carrying  formidable 
marbled  note-books  walk  about  with  an  important 
air.     A  mountain  range  of  pumpkins  rises  behind  a 


64  William  McFee 

hill  of  cabbages.  Festoons  of  onions  are  being  sus- 
pended from  rails.  The  heads  of  barrels  are  being 
knocked  in,  disclosing  purple  grapes  buried  in  cork- 
dust.  Pears  and  figs,  grown  under  glass  for  wealthy 
patrons,  repose  in  soft  tissue-lined  boxes.  A  broken 
crate  of  tangerine  oranges  has  spilled  its  contents  in 
a  splash  of  ruddy  gold  on  the  plank  runway.  A 
wagon  is  driven  in,  a  heavy  load  of  beets,  and  the 
broad  wheels  crush  through  the  soft  fruit  so  that  the 
air  is  heavy  with  the  acrid  sweetness. 

We  pick  our  way  among  the  booths  and  stalls  until 
we  find  the  flowers.  Here  is  a  crowd  of  ladies,  young, 
so-so  and  some  quite  matronly,  and  all  dressed  in 
this  same  flamboyant  finery  of  which  I  have  spoken. 
They  are  grouped  about  an  almost  overpowering  mass 
of  blooms.  Roses  just  now  predominate.  There  is 
a  satisfying  solidity  about  the  bunches,  a  glorious 
abundance  which,  in  a  commodity  so  easily  enjoyed 
without  ownership,  is  scarcely  credible.  I  feel  no 
desire  to  own  these  huge  aggregations  of  odorous 
beauty.  It  would  be  like  owning  a  harem,  one  imag- 
ines. Violets,  solid  patches  of  vivid  blue  in  round 
baskets,  eglantine  in  dainty  boxes,  provide  a  foil  to 
the  majestic  blazonry  of  the  roses  and  the  dew- 
spangled  forest  of  maiden-hair  fern  near  by. 

"And  what  are  those  things  at  all?"  demands  my 
companion,  diverted  for  a  moment  from  the  flowers. 


The  Market  65 

She  nods  towards  a  mass  of  dull-green  affairs  piled 
on  mats  or  being  lifted  from  big  vans.  She  is  a 
Cockney  and  displays  surprise  when  she  is  told  those 
things  are  bananas.  She  shrugs  and  turns  again  to 
the  musk-roses,  and  forgets.  But  to  me,  as  the  harsh, 
penetrating  odor  of  the  green  fruit  cuts  across  the 
heavy  perfume  of  the  flowers,  comes  a  picture  of  the 
farms  in  distant  Colombia  or  perhaps  Costa  Rica. 
There  is  nothing  like  an  odor  to  stir  memories.  I  see 
the  timber  pier  and  the  long  line  of  rackety  open- 
slatted  cars  jangling  into  the  dark  shed,  pushed  by  a 
noisy,  squealing  locomotive.  I  see  the  boys  lying 
asleep  between  shifts,  their  enormous  straw  hats  cov- 
ering their  faces  as  they  sprawl.  In  the  distance  rise 
the  blue  mountains;  behind  is  the  motionless  blue  sea. 
I  hear  the  whine  of  the  elevators,  the  monotonous 
click  of  the  counters,  the  harsh  cries  of  irresponsible 
and  argumentative  natives.  I  feel  the  heat  of  the 
tropic  day,  and  see  the  gleam  of  the  white  waves 
breaking  on  yellow  sands  below  tall  palms.  I  recall 
the  mysterious  impenetrable  solitude  of  the  jungle,  a 
solitude  alive,  if  one  is  equipped  with  knowledge, 
with  a  ceaseless  warfare  of  winged  and  crawling  hosts. 
And  while  my  companion  is  busily  engaged  in  getting 
copy  for  a  special  article  about  the  Market,  I  step 
nimbly  out  of  the  way  of  a  swarthy  gentleman  from 
Calabria,  who  with  his  two-wheeled  barrow  is  the  last 


66  William  McFee 

link  in  the  immense  chain  of  transportation  connecting 
the  farmer  in  the  distant  tropics  and  the  cockney  pedes- 
trian who  halts  on  the  sidewalk  and  purchases  a  ban- 
ana for  a  couple  of  pennies. 


HOLY  IRELAND 
By  Joyce  Kilmer 

This  echo  of  the  A.E.F.  is  probably  the  best  thing  Joyce  Kil- 
mer ever  wrote,  and  shows  the  vein  of  real  tenderness  and 
insight  that  lay  beneath  his  lively  and  versatile  career  on  Grub 
Street.  In  him,  as  in  many  idealists,  the  Irish  theme  had  become 
legendary,  it  was  part  of  his  religion  and  his  dream-life,  and  he 
treated  it  with  real  affection  and  humor.  You  will  find  it  crop- 
ping out  many  times  in  his  verses.  The  Irish  problem  as  it  is 
reflected  in  this  country  is  not  always  clearly  understood. 
Ireland,  in  the  minds  of  our  poets,  is  a  mystical  land  of  green 
hills,  saints  and  leprechauns,  and  its  political  problems  are  easy. 

Joyce  Kilmer  was  born  in  New  Brunswick  in  1886;  studied  at 
Rutgers  College  and  Columbia  University ;  taught  school ;  worked 
on  the  staff  of  the  Standard  Dictionary;  passed  through  phases 
of  socialism  and  Anglicanism  into  the  Catholic  communion,  and 
joined  the  Sunday  staff  of  the  New  York  Times  in  1913.  He  was 
killed  fighting  in  France  in  1918.  This  sketch  is  taken  from 
the  second  of  the  three  volumes  in  which  Robert  Cortes  Holliday, 
his  friend  and  executor,  has  collected  Joyce  Kilmer's  work. 

We  had  hiked  seventeen  miles  that  stormy  December 
day — the  third  of  a  four  days'  journey.  The  snow 
was  piled  high  on  our  packs,  our  rifles  were  crusted 
with  ice,  the  leather  of  our  hob-nailed  boots  was 
frozen  stiff  over  our  lamed  feet.  The  weary  lieutenant 
led  us  to  the  door  of  a  little  house  in  a  side  street. 

"Next  twelve  men,"  he  said.  A  dozen  of  us  dropped 
out  of  the  ranks  and  dragged  ourselves  over  the 
threshold.  We  tracked  snow  and  mud  over  a  spot- 
less stone  floor.  Before  an  open  fire  stood  Madame 
and  the  three  children — a  girl  of  eight  years,  a  boy  of 

67 


68  Joyce  Kilmer 

five,  a  boy  of  three.  They  stared  with  round  fright- 
ened eyes  at  les  soldats  Americans,  the  first  they  had 
ever  seen.  We  were  too  tired  to  stare  back.  We  at 
once  cHmbed  to  the  chill  attic,  our  billet,  our  lodging 
for  the  night.  First  we  lifted  the  packs  from  one  an- 
other's aching  shoulders:  then,  without  spreading  our 
blankets,  we  lay  down  on  the  bare  boards. 

For  ten  minutes  there  was  silence,  broken  by  an 
occasional  groan,  an  oath,  the  striking  of  a  match. 
Cigarettes  glowed  like  fireflies  in  a  forest.  Then  a 
voice  came  from  the  corrier: 

"Where  is  Sergeant  Reilly?"  it  said.  We  lazily 
searched.  There  was  no  Sergeant  Reilly  to  be 
found. 

"I'll  bet  the  old  bum  has  gone  out  after  a  pint," 
said  the  voice.  And  with  the  curiosity  of  the  Amer- 
ican and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Irish  we  lumbered 
downstairs  in  quest  of  Sergeant  Reilly. 

He  was  sitting  on  a  low  bench  by  the  fire.  His 
shoes  were  off  and  his  bruised  feet  were  in  a  pail  of 
cold  water.  He  was  too  good  a  soldier  to  expose  them 
to  the  heat  at  once.  The  little  girl  was  on  his  lap 
and  the  little  boys  stood  by  and  envied  him.  And  in 
a  voice  that  twenty  years  of  soldiering  and  oceans  of 
whisky  had  failed  to  rob  of  its  Celtic  sweetness,  he 
was  softly  singing:  "Ireland  Isn't  Ireland  Any  More." 
We  listened  respectfully. 


Holy  Ireland  69 

"They  cheer  the  King  and  then  salute  him/'  said 
Sergeant  Reilly. 

"A  regular  Irishman  would  shoot  him,"  and  we 
all  joined  in  the  chorus,  "Ireland  Isn't  Ireland  Any 
More.'' 

"Ooh,  la,  la!"  exclaimed  Madame,  and  she  and  all 
the  children  began  to  talk  at  the  top  of  their  voices. 
What  they  said  Heaven  knows,  but  the  tones  were 
friendly,  even  admiring. 

"Gentlemen,"  said  Sergeant  Reilly  from  his  post  of 
honor,  "the  lady  who  runs  this  billet  is  a  very  nice 
lady  indeed.  She  says  yez  can  all  take  off  your  shoes 
and  dry  your  socks  by  the  fire.  But  take  turns  and 
don't  crowd  or  I'll  turn  yez  all  upstairs." 

Now  Madame,  a  woman  of  some  forty  years,  was 
a  true  bourgeoise,  with  all  the  thrift  of  her  class.  And 
by  the  terms  of  her  agreement  with  the  authorities  she 
was  required  to  let  the  soldiers  have  for  one  night  the 
attic  of  her  house  to  sleep  in — nothing  more ;  no  light, 
no  heat.  Also,  wood  is  very  expensive  in  France — 
for  reasons  that  are  engraven  in  letters  of  blood  on 
the  pages  of  history.     Nevertheless — 

"Asseyez-vous,  s'il  vous  plait,"  said  Madame.  And 
she  brought  nearer'  to  the  fire  all  the  chairs  the  estab- 
lishment possessed  and  some  chests  and  boxes  to  be 
used  as  seats.  And  she  and  the  little  girl,  whose  name 
was  Solange,  went  out  into  the  snow  and  came  back 


70  Joyce  Kilmer 

with  heaping  armfuls  of  small  logs.  The  fire  blazed 
merrily — more  merrily  than  it  had  blazed  since  Aug- 
ust, 19 1 4,  perhaps.  We  surrounded  it,  and  soon  the 
air  was  thick  with  steam  from  our  drying  socks. 

Meanwhile  Madame  and  the  Sergeant  had  gener- 
ously admitted  all  eleven  of  us  into  their  conversation. 
A  spirited  conversation  it  was,  too,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  she  knew  no  English  and  the  extent  of  his 
French  was  "du  pain,"  "du  vin,"  "cognac"  and  "bon 
jour."  Those  of  us  who  knew  a  little  more  of  the 
language  of  the  country  acted  as  interpreters  for  the 
others.  We  learned  the  names  of  the  children  and 
their  ages.  We  learned  that  our  hostess  was  a  widow. 
Her  husband  had  fallen  in  battle  just  one  month  be- 
fore our  arrival  in  her  home.  She  showed  us  with 
simple  pride  and  affection  and  restrained  grief  his 
picture.  Then  she  showed  us  those  of  her  two  brothers 
— one  now  fighting  at  Salonica,  the  other  a  prisoner 
of  war — of  her  mother  and  father,  of  herself  dressed 
for  First  Communion. 

This  last  picture  she  showed  somewhat  shyly,  as  if 
doubting  that  we  would  understand  it.  But  when  one 
of  us  asked  in  halting  French  if  Solange,  her  little 
daughter,  had  yet  made  her  First  Com.munion,  then 
Madame's  face  cleared. 

"Mais  oui  1"  she  exclaimed,  "Et  vous,  ma  foi,  vous 
etes  Catholigues,  n'est-ce  pas?" 


Holy  Ireland  ^l 

At  once  rosary  beads  were  flourished  to  prove  our 
right  to  answer  this  question  affirmatively.  Tattered 
prayer-books  and  somewhat  dingy  scapulars  were 
brought  to  light.  Madame  and  the  children  chattered 
their  surprise  and  delight  to  each  other,  and  every  ex- 
hibit called  for  a  new  outburst. 

"Ah,  le  bon  S.  Benoit!  Ah,  voila,  le  Conception 
Immacule!  Ooh  la  la,  le  Sacre  Cceur!"  (which  last 
exclamation  sounded  in  no  wise  as  irreverent  as  it 
looks  in  print). 

Now  other  treasures,  too,  were  shown — treasures 
chiefly  photographic.  There  were  family  groups,  there 
were  Coney  Island  snapshots.  And  Madame  and  the 
children  were  a  gratifyingly  appreciative  audience. 
They  admired  and  sympathized;  they  exclaimed  ap- 
propriately at  the  beauty  of  every  girl's  face,  the  tender- 
ness of  every  pictured  mother.  We  had  become  the 
intimates  of  Madame.  She  had  admitted  us  into  her 
family  and  we  her  into  ours. 

Soldiers — -American  soldiers  of  Irish  descent — ^have 
souls  and  hearts.  These  organs  (if  the  soul  may  be 
so  termed)  had  been  satisfied.  But  our  stomachs  re- 
mained— and  that  they  yearned  was  evident  to  us: 
We  had  made  our  hike  on  a  meal  of  hardtack  and 
"corned  willy."  Mess  call  would  sound  soon.  Should 
we  force  our  wet  shoes  on  again  and  plod  through 
the  snowy  streets  to  the  temporary  mess-shack?    We 


7a  Joyce  Kilmer 

knew  our  supply  wagons  had  not  succeeded  in*  climb- 
ing the  last  hill  into  town,  and  that  therefore  bread 
and  unsweetened  coffee  would  be  our  portion.  A 
great  depression  settled  upon  us. 

But  Sergeant  Reilly  rose  to  the  occasion. 

"Boys/'  he  said,  "this  here  lady  has  got  a  good  fire 
going,  and  I'll  bet  she  can  cook.  What  do  you  say 
we  g^  her  to  fiy:  us  up  a  meal  ?" 

The  proposal  was  received  joyously  at  first.  Then 
some  one  said : 

"But  I  haven't  got  any  money."  "Neither  have  I 
— not  a  damn  sou!"  said  another.  And  again  the 
spiritual  temperature  of  the  room  fell. 

Again  Sergeant  Reilly  spoke: 

"I  haven't  got  any  money  to  speak  of,  meself,"  he 
said.  "But  let's  have  a  show-down.  I  guess  we've 
got  enough  to  buy  somethin'  to  eat." 

It  was  long  after  pay-day,  and  we  were  not  hopeful 
of  the  results  of  the  search.  But  the  wealthy  (that  is, 
those  who  had  two  francs)  made  up  for  the  poor 
(that  is,  those  who  had  two  sous).  And  among  the 
coins  on  the  table  I  noticed  an  American  dime,  an 
English  half-crown  and  a  Chinese  piece  with  a  square 
hole  in  the  center.  In  negotiable  tender  the  money 
came  in  all  to  eight  francs. 

It  takes  more  money  than  that  to  feed  twelve  hungry 
soldiers  these  days  in  France.    But  there  was  no  harm 


Holy  Ireland  73 

in  trying.  So  an  ex-seminarian,  an  ex-bookkeeper 
and  an  ex-street-car  conductor  aided  Sergeant  Reilly 
in  explaining  in  French  that  had  both  a  brogue  and  a 
Yankee  twang  that  we  were  hungry,  that  this  was  all 
the  money  we  had  in  the  world,  and  that  we  wanted 
her  to  cook  us  something  to  eat. 

Now  Madame  was  what  they  call  in  New  England 
a  "capable"  woman.  In  a  jiffy  she  had  the  money  in 
Solange's  hand  and  had  that  admirable  child  cloaked 
and  wooden-shod  for  the  street,  and  fully  informed 
as  to  what  she  was  to  buy.  What  Madame  and  the 
children  had  intended  to  have  for  supper  I  do  not 
know,  for  there  was  nothing  in  the  kitchen  but  the 
fire,  the  stove,  the  table,  some  shelves  of  dishes  and 
an  enormous  bed.  Nothing  in  the  way  of  a  food  cup- 
board could  be  seen.  And  the  only  other  room  of  the 
house  was  the  bare  attic. 

When  Solange  came  back  she  carried  in  a  basket 
bigger  than  herself  these  articles:  (i)  two  loaves  of 
war-bread;  (2)  five  bottles  of  red  wine;  (3)  three 
cheeses;  (4)  numerous  potatoes;  (5)  a  lump  of  fat; 
(6)  a  bag  of  coffee.  The  whole  represented,  as  was 
afterward  demonstrated,  exactly  the  sum  of  ten  francs, 
fifty  centimes. 

Well,  we  all  set  to  work  peeling  potatoes.  Then 
with  a  veritable  French  trench-knife  Madame  cut  the 
potatoes  into  long  strips.    Meanwhile  Solange  had  put 


74  Joyce  Kilmer 

tlie  lump  of  fat  into  the  big  black  pot  that  hung  by  a 
chain  over  the  fire.  In  the  boiling  grease  the  potatoes 
were  placed,  Madame  standing  by  with  a  big  ladle 
punched  full  of  holes  (I  regret  that  I  do  not  know  the 
technical  name  for  this  instrument)  and  keeping  the 
potato-strips  swimming,  zealously  frustrating  any  at- 
tempt on  their  part  to  lie  lazily  at  the  bottom  of  the 
pot. 

We  forgot  all  about  the  hike  as  we  sat  at  supper 
that  evening.  The  only  absentees  were  the  two  little 
boys,  Michael  and  Paul.  And  they  were  really  absent 
only  from  our  board — they  were  in  the  room,  in  the 
great  built-in  bed  that  was  later  to  hold  also  Madame 
and  Solange.  Their  little  bodies  were  covered  by 
the  three- foot  thick  mattress-like  red  silk  quilt,  but 
their  tousled  heads  protruded  and  they  watched  us 
unblinkingly  all  the  evening. 

But  just  as  we  sat  down,  before  Sergeant  Reilly 
began  his  task  of  dishing  out  the  potatoes  and  starting 
the  bottles  on  their  way,  Madame  stopped  her  chat- 
tering and  looked  at  Solange.  And  Solange  stopped 
her  chattering  and  looked  at  Madame.  And  they  both 
looked  rather  searchingly  at  us.  We  didn't  know 
what  was  the  matter,  but  we  felt  rather  embarrassed. 

Then  Madame  began  to  talk,  slowly  and  loudly,  as 
one  talks  to  make  foreigners  understand.  And  the 
gist  of  her  remarks  was  that  she  was  surprised  to  see 


Holy  Ireland  75 

that  American  Catholics  did  not  say  grace  before 
eating  like  French  Catholics. 

We  sprang  to  our  feet  at  once.  But  it  was  not 
Sergeant  Reilly  who  saved  the  situation.  Instead,  the 
ex-seminarian  (he  is  only  temporarily  an  ex-semin- 
arian; he'll  be  preaching  missions  and  giving  retreats 
yet  if  a  bit  of  shrapnel  doesn't  hasten  his  journey  to 
Heaven)  said,  after  we  had  blessed  ourselves :  "Bene- 
dicite;  nos  et  quae  sumus  sumpturi  benedicat  Deus, 
Pater  et  Fihus  et  Spiritus  Sanctus.     Amen." 

Madame  and  Solange,  obviously  relieved,  joined 
us  in  the  Amen,  and  we  sat  down  again  to  eat. 

It  was  a  memorable  feast.  There  was  not  much 
conversation — except  on  the  part  of  Madame  and 
Solange — but  there  was  plenty  of  good  cheer.  Also 
there  was  enough  cheese  and  bread  and  wine  and 
potatoes  for  all  of  us — half  starved  as  we  were  when 
we  sat  down.  Even  big  Considine,  who  drains  a  can 
of  condensed  milk  at  a  gulp  and  has  been  known  to 
eat  an  apple  pie  without  stopping  to  take  breath,  was 
satisfied.  There  were  toasts,  also,  all  proposed  by 
Sergeant  Reilly — toasts  to  Madame,  and  to  the  chil- 
dren, and  to  France,  and  to  the  United  States,  and  to 
the  Old  Gray  Mare  (this  last  toast  having  an  esoteric 
significance  apparent  only  to  illuminati  of  Sergeant 
Reilly's  circle). 

The  table  cleared  and  the  "agimus  tibi  gratias"  duly 


76  Joyce  Kilmer 

said,  we  sat  before  the  fire,  most  of  us  on  the  floor. 
We  were  warm  and  happy  and  full  of  good  food  and 
good  wine.  I  spied  a  slip  of  paper  on  the  floor  by 
Solange's  foot  and  unashamedly  read  it.  It  was  an 
accounting  for  the  evening's  expenditures — ^totaling 
exactly  ten  francs  and  fifty  centimes. 

Now  when  soldiers  are  unhappy — during  a  long, 
hard  hike,  for  instance- — they  sing  to  keep  up  their 
spirits.  And  when  they  are  happy,  as  on  the  even- 
ing now  under  consideration,  they  sing  to  express 
their  satisfaction  with  life.  We  sang  "Sweet  Rosie 
O'Grady."  We  shook  the  kitchen-bedroom  with  the 
echoes  of  "Take  Me  Back  to  New  York  Town."  We 
informed  Madame,  Solange,  Paul,  Michael,  in  fact, 
the  whole  village,  that  we  had  never  been  a  wanderer 
and  that  we  longed  for  our  Indiana  home.  We  grew 
sentimental  over  "Mother  Machree."  And  Sergeant 
Reilly  obliged  with  a  reel — in  his  socks — to  an  accom- 
plishment of  whistling  and  handclapping. 

Now,  it  was  our  hostess's  turn  to  entertain.  We 
intimated  as  much.  She  responded,  first  by  much  talk, 
much  consultation  with  Solange,  and  finally  by  going 
to  one  of  the  shelves  that  held  the  pans  and  taking 
down  some  paper-covered  books. 

There  was  more  consultation,  whispered  this  time, 
and  much  turning  of  pages.  Then,  after  some  pre- 
liminary coughing  and  humming,   the  music  began 


Holy  Ireland  77 

— the  woman's  rich  alto  blending  with  the  child's 
shrill  but  sweet  notes.  And  what  they  sang  was 
"Tantum  ergo  Sacramentum." 

Why  she  should  have  thought  that  an  appropriate 
song  to  offer  this  company  of  rough  soldiers  from  a 
distant  land  I  do  not  know.  And  why  we  foimd  it 
appropriate  it  is  harder  still  to  say.  But  it  did  seem 
appropriate  to  all  of  us — ^to  Sergeant  Reilly,  to  Jim 
(who  used  to  drive  a  truck),  to  Larry  (who  sold 
cigars),  to  Frank  (who  tended  a  bar  on  Fourteenth 
Street).  It  seemed,  for  some  reason,  eminently  fit- 
ting. 'Not  one  of  us  then  or  later  expressed  any  sur- 
prise that  this  hymn,  familiar  to  most  of  us  since 
our  mothers  first  led  us  to  the  Parish  Church  down 
the  pavements  of  New  York  or  across  the  Irish  hills, 
should  be  sung  to  us  in  this  strange  land  and  in  these 
strange  circumstances. 

Since  the  gracious  Latin  of  the  Church  was  in 
order  and  since  the  season  was  appropriate,  one  of 
us  suggested  "Adeste  Fideles"  for  the  next  item  on 
the  evening's  program.  Madame  and  Solange  and  our 
ex-seminarian  knew  all  the  words  and  the  rest  of  us 
came  in  strong  with  "Venite,  adoremus  Dominum." 

Then,  as  if  to  show  that  piety  and  mirth  may  live 
together,  the  ladies  obliged  with  "Au  Clair  de  la  Lune" 
and  other  simple  ballads  of  old  France.  And  after 
taps  had  sounded  in  the  street  outside  our  door,  and 


78  Joyce  Kilmer 

there  was  yawning,  and  wrist-watches  were  being 
scanned,  the  evening's  entertainment  ended,  by  general 
consent,  with  patriotic  selections.  We  sang — as  best 
we  could — the  "Star- Spangled  Banner,"  Solange  and 
her  mother  humming  the  air  and  applauding  at  the 
conclusion.  Then  we  attempted  "La  Marseillaise." 
Of  course,  we  did  not  know  the  words.  Solange  came 
to  our  rescue  with  two  little  pamphlets  containing  the 
song,  so  we  looked  over  each  other's  shoulders  and  got 
to  work  in  earnest.  Madame  sang  with  us,  and  So- 
lange. But  during  the  final  stanza  Madame  did  not 
sing.  She  leaned  against  the  great  family  bedstead 
and  looked  at  us.  She  had  taken  one  of  the  babies 
from  under  the  red  comforter  and  held  him  to  her 
breast.  One  of  her  red  and  toil-scarred  hands  half 
covered  his  fat  little  back.  There  was  a  gentle  dignity 
about  that  plain,  hard-working  woman,  that  soldier's 
widow — we  all  felt  it.  And  some  of  us  saw  the  tears 
in  her  eyes. 

There  are  mists,  faint  and  beautiful  and  unchang- 
ing, that  hang  over  the  green  slopes  of  some  moun- 
tains I  know.  I  have  seen  them  on  the  Irish  hills  and 
I  have  seen  them  on  the  hills  of  France.  I  think  that 
they  are  made  of  the  tears  of  good  brave  women. 

Before  I  went  to  sleep  that  night  I  exchanged  a  few 
words  witb  Sergeant  Reilly.  We  lay  side  by  side 
gn  the  floor,  now  piled  with  straw.    Blankets,  shelter- 


Holy  Ireland  79 

halves,  slickers  and  overcoats  insured  warm  sleep. 
Sergeant  Reilly's  hard  old  face  was  wrapped  round 
with  his  muffler.  The  final  cigarette  of  the  day  burned 
lazily  in  a  comer  of  his  mouth. 

"That  was  a  pretty  good  evening,  Sarge,"  I  said. 
"We  sure  were  in  luck  when  we  struck  this  billet." 

He  grunted  affirmatively,  then  puffed  in  silence  for 
a  few  minutes.  Then  he  deftly  spat  the  cigarette  into 
a  strawless  portion  of  the  floor,  where  it  glowed  for  a 
few  seconds  before  it  went  out. 

"You  said  it,"  he  remarked.  "We  were  in  luck  is 
right.    What  do  you  know  about  that  lady,  anyway  ?" 

"Why,"  I  answered,  "I  thought  she  treated  us  pretty 
white." 

"Joe,"  said  Sergeant  Reilly,  "do  you  realize  how 
much  trouble  that  woman  took  to  make  this  bunch 
of  roughnecks  comfortable  ?  She  didn't  make  a  damn 
cent  on  that  feed,  you  know.  The  kid  spent  all  the 
money  we  give  her.  And  she's  out  about  six  francs 
for  firewood,  too — I  wish  to  God  I  had  the  money 
to  pay  her.  I  bet  she'll  go  cold  for  a  week  now,  and 
hungry,  too. 

"And  that  ain't  all,"  he  continued,  after  a  pause 
broken  only  by  an  occasional  snore  from  our  blissful 
neighbors.  "Look  at  the  way  she  cooked  them  pomme 
de  terres  and  fixed  things  up  for  us  and  let  us  sit 
down  there  with  her  like  we  was  her  family.     And 


8o  Joyce  Kilmer 

look  at  the  way  she  and  the  little  Sallie  there  sung 
for  us. 

"I  tell  you,  Joe,  it  makes  me  think  of  old  times  to 
hear  a  woman  sing  them  church  hymns  to  me  that 
way.  It's  forty  years  since  I  heard  a  hymn  sung  in 
a  kitchen,  and  it  was  my  mother,  God  rest  her,  that 
sang  them.  I  sort  of  realize  what  we're  fighting  for 
now,  and  I  never  did  before.  It's  for  women  like 
that  and  their  kids. 

"It  gave  me  a  turn  to  see  her  a-sitting  there  singing 
them  hymns.  I  remembered  when  I  was  a  boy  in 
Shangolden.  I  wonder  if  there's  many  women  like 
that  in  France  now — telling  their  beads  and  singing 
the  old  hymns  and  treating  poor  traveling  men  the 
way  she's  just  after  treating  us.  There  used  to  be 
lots  of  women  like  that  in  the  Old  Country.  And  I 
think  that's  why  it  was  called  'Holy  Ireland.' " 


A  FAMILIAR  PREFACE 
By  Joseph  Conrad 

This  glorious  expression  of  the  credo  of  all  artists,  in  what- 
ever form  of  creation,  lastingly  enriches  the  English  tongue.  It 
is  from  the  preface  to  A  Personal  Record,  that  fascinating  auto- 
biographical volume  in  which  Conrad  tells  the  curious  story  of 
a  Polish  boy  who  ran  away  to  sea  and  began  to  write  in  Eng- 
lish. As  a  companion  piece,  those  who  have  the  honor  of  the 
writer's  craft  at  heart  should  read  Conrad's  preface  to  The 
Nigger  of  the  Narcissus. 

"All  ambitions  are  lawful  except  those  which  climb  upward 
on  the  miseries  or  credulities  of  mankind."  Is  it  permissible  to 
wonder  what  some  newspaper  owners — say  Mr.  Hearst — would 
reply  to  that? 

Mr.  Conrad's  career  is  too^  well  known  to  be  annotated  here. 
If  by  any  chance  the  reader  is  not  acquainted  with  it,  it  will  be 
to  his  soul's  advantage  to  go  to  a  public  library  and  look  it  up. 

As  a  general  rule  we  do  not  want  much  encourage- 
ment to  talk  about  ourselves;  yet  this  little  book  *  is  the 
result  of  a  friendly  suggestion,  and  even  of  a  little 
friendly  pressure.  I  defended  myself  with  some  spirit : 
but,  with  characteristic  tenacity,  the  friendly  voice 
insisted,  "You  know,  you  really  must." 

It  was  not  an  argument,  but  I  submitted  at  once. 
If  one  must!  .  .  . 

You  perceive  the  force  of  a  word.  He  who  wants 
to  persuade  should  put  his  trust  not  in  the  right  argu- 
ment, but  in  the  right  word.     The  power  of  sound 

*  A  Personal  Record.  \ 

8i 


82  Joseph  Conrad 

has  always  been  greater  than  the  power  of  sense.  I 
don't  say  this  by  way  of  disparagement.  It  is  better 
for  mankind  to  be  impressionable  than  reflective. 
Nothing  humanely  great — great,  I  mean,  as  affecting 
a  whole  mass  of  lives — has  come  from  reflection.  On 
the  other  hand,  you  cannot  fail  to  see  the  power  of 
mere  words;  such  words  as  Glory,  for  instance,  or 
Pity.  I  won't  mention  any  more.  They  are  not  far 
to  seek.  Shouted  with  perseverance,  with  ardor, 
with  conviction,  these  two  by  their  sound  alone  hav^ 
set  whole  nations  in  motion  and  upheaved  the  dry, 
hard  ground  on  which  rests  our  whole  social  fabric, 
There's  "virtue"  for  you  if  you  hke!  ...  Of  couise, 
the  accent  must  be  attended  to.  The  right  accent. 
That's  very  important.  The  capacious  lung,  the  thun- 
dering or  the  tender  vocal  chords.  Don't  talk  to  me 
of  your  Archimedes'  lever.  He  was  an  absent-minded 
person  with  a  mathematical  imagination.  Mathemat- 
ics commands  all  my  respect,  but  I  have  no  use  for 
engines.  Give  me  the  right  word  and  the  right  ac- 
cent and  I  will  move  the  world. 

What  a  dream  for  a  writer !  Because  written  words 
have  their  accent,  too.  Yes!  Let  me  only  find  the 
right  word !  Surely  it  must  be  lying  somewhere  among 
the  wreckage  of  all  the  plaints  and  all  the  exultations 
poured  out  aloud  since  the  first  day  when  hope,  the 
undying,  came  down  on  earth.    It  may  be  there,  close 


/L  Familiar  Preface  83 

by,  disregarded,  invisible,  quite  at  hand.  But  it's  no 
good.  I  believe  there  are  men  who  can  lay  hold  of 
a  needle  in  a  pottle  of  hay  at  the  first  try.  For  my- 
self, I  have  never  had  such  luck. 

And  then  there  is  that  accent.  Another  difficulty. 
For  who  is  going  to  tell  whether  the  accent  is  right 
or  wrong  till  the  word  is  shouted,  and  fails  to  be 
heard,  perhaps,  and  goes  down-wind,  leaving  the  world 
unmoved?  Once  upon  a  time  there  lived  an  emperor 
who  was  a  sage  and  something  of  a  literary  man.  He 
jotted  down  on  ivory  tablets  thoughts,  maxims,  reflec- 
tions which  chance  has  preserved  for  the  edification  of 
posterity.  Among  other  sayings — I  am  quoting  from 
memory — I  remember  this  solemn  admonition:  "Let 
all  thy  words  have  the  accent  of  heroic  truth."  The 
accent  of  heroic  truth!  This  is  very  fine,  but  I  am 
thinking  that  it  is  an  easy  matter  for  an  austere  em- 
peror to  jot  down  grandiose  advice.  Most  of  the 
working  truths  on  this  earth  are  humble,  not  heroic; 
and  there  have  been  times  in  the  history  of  mankind 
when  the  accents  of  heroic  truth  have  moved  it  to 
nothing  but  derision. 

Nobody  will  expect  to  find  between  the  covers  of 
this  little  book  words  of  extraordinary  potency  or 
accents  of  irresistible  heroism.  However  humiliating 
for  my  self-esteem,  I  must  confess  that  the  counsels 
of  Marcus  Aurelius  are  not  for  me.    They  are  more 


84  Joseph  Conrad 

fit  for  a  moralist  than  for  an  artist.  Truth  of  a 
modest  sort  I  can  promise  you,  and  also  sincerity. 
That  complete,  praiseworthy  sincerity  which,  while 
it  delivers  one  into  the  hands  of  one's  enemies,  is  as 
likely  as  not  to  embroil  one  with  one's  friends. 

"Embroil'*  is  perhaps  too  strong  an  expression.  I 
can't  imagine  among  either  my  enemies  or  my  friends 
a  being  so  hard  up  for  something  to  do  as  to  quarrel 
with  me.  "To  disappoint  one's  friends"  would  be 
nearer  the  mark.  Most,  almost  all,  friendships  of  the 
writing  period  of  my  life  have  come  to  me  through 
my  books;  and  I  know  that  a  novelist  lives  in  his 
work.  He  stands  there,  the  only  reality  in  an  in- 
vented world,  among  imaginary  things,  happenings,, 
and  people.  Writing  about  them,  he  is  only  writing 
about  himself.  But  the  disclosure  is  not  complete. 
He  remains,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  figure  behind  the 
veil ;  a  suspected  rather  than  a  seen  presence — ^a  move- 
ment and  a  voice  behind  the  draperies  of  fiction.  In 
these  personal  notes  there  is  no  such  veil.  And  I 
cannot  help  thinking  of  a  passage  in  the  "Imitation  of 
Christ"  where  the  ascetic  author,  who  knew  life  so 
profoundly,  says  that  "there  are  persons  esteemed  on 
their  reputation  who  by  showing  themselves  destroy 
the  opinion  one  had  of  them."  This  is  the  danger 
incurred  by  an  author  of  fiction  who  sets  out  to  talk 
about  himself  without  disguise. 


A  Familiar  Preface  85 

While  these  reminiscent  pages  were  appearing  seri- 
ally I  was  remonstrated  with  for  bad  economy;  as  if 
such  writing  were  a  form  of  self-indulgence  wasting 
the  substance  of  future  volumes.     It  seems  that  I  am 
not  sufficiently  literary.     Indeed,  a  man  who  never 
wrote  a  line  for  print  till  he  was  thirty-six  cannot 
bring  himself  to  look  upon  his  existence  and  his  ex- 
perience, upon  the  sum  of  his  thoughts,  sensations,  and 
emotions,  upon  his  memories  and  his  regrets,  and  the 
whole  possession  of  his  past,  as  only  so  much  material 
for  his  hands.     Once  before,  some  three  years  ago, 
when  I  published  'The  Mirror  of  the  Sea,"  a  volume 
of  impressions  and  memories,  the  same  remarks  were 
made  to  me.    Practical  remarks.    But,  truth  to  say,  I 
have  never  understood  the  kind  of  thrift  they  recom- 
mend.    I  wanted  to  pay  my  tribute  to  the  sea,  its 
ships  and  its  men,  to  whom  I  remain  indebted  for  so 
much  which  has  gone  to  make  me  what  I  am.    That 
seemed  to  me  the  only  shape  in  which  I  could  offer 
it  to  their  shades.     There  could  not  be  a  question  in 
my  mind  of  anything  else.    It  is  quite  possible  that  I 
am  a  bad  economist;  but  it  is  certain  that  I  am  in- 
corrigible. 

Having  matured  in  the  surroundings  and  under  the 
special  conditions  of  sea  life,  I  have  a  special  piety 
toward  that  form  of  my  past;  for  its  impressions  were 
vivid,  its  appeal  direct,  its  demands  such  as  could  be 


86  Joseph  Conrad 

responded  to  with  the  natural  elation  of  youth  and 
strength  equal  to  the  call.  There  was  nothing  in  them 
to  perplex  a  young  conscience.  Having  broken  away 
from  my  origins  under  a  storm  of  blame  from  every 
quarter  which  had  the  merest  shadow  of  right  to 
voice  an  opinion,  removed  by  great  distances  from 
such  natural  affections  as  were  still  left  to  me,  and 
even  estranged,  in  a  measure,  from  them  by  the  totally 
unintelligible  character  of  the  life  which  had  seduced 
me  so  mysteriously  from  my  allegiance,  I  may  safely 
say  that  through  the  blind  force  of  circumstances  the 
sea  was  to  be  all  my  world  and  the  merchant  service 
my  only  home  for  a  long  succession  of  years.  No 
wonder,  then,  that  in  my  two  exclusively  sea  books 
— "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,"  and  "The  Mirror 
of  the  Sea"  (and  in  the  few  short  sea  stories  like 
"Youth"  and  "Typhoon") — I  have  tried  with  an 
almost  filial  regard  to  render  the  vibration  of  life  in  the 
great  world  of  waters,  in  the  hearts  of  the  simple  men 
who  have  for  ages  traversed  its  solitudes,  and  also 
that  something  sentient  which  seems  to  dwell  in  ships 
— the  creatures  of  their  hands  and  the  objects  of  their 
care. 

One's  literary  life  must  turn  frequently  for  sus- 
tenance to  memories  and  seek  discourse  with  the 
shades,  unless  one  has  made  up  one's  mind  to  write 
only  in  order  to  reprove  mankind  for  what  it  is,  or 


A  Familiar  Preface  87 

praise  it  for  what  it  is  not,  or — generally — to  teach  it 
how  to  behave.  Being  neither  quarrelsome,  nor  a 
flatterer,  nor  a  sage,  I  have  done  none  of  these  things, 
and  I  am  prepared  to  put  up  serenely  with  the  in- 
significance which  attaches  to  persons  who  are  not 
meddlesome  in  some  way  or  other.  But  resignation  is 
not  indifference.  I  would  not  like  to  be  left  stand- 
ing as  a  mere  spectator  on  the  bank  of  the  great  stream 
carrying  onward  so  many  lives.  I  would  fain  claim 
for  myself  the  faculty  of  so  much  insight  as  can  be 
expressed  in  a  voice  of  sympathy  and  compassion. 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  one,  at  least,  authoritative 
quarter  of  criticism  I  am  suspected  of  a  certain  unemo- 
tional, grim  acceptance  of  facts — of  what  the  French 
would  call  secheresse  du  coeur.  Fifteen  years  of  un- 
broken silence  before  praise  or  blame  testify  suffi- 
ciently to  my  respect  for  criticism,  that  fine  flower 
of  personal  expression  in  the  garden  of  letters.  But 
this  is  more  of  a  personal  matter,  reaching  the  man 
behind  the  work,  and  therefore  it  may  be  alluded  to 
in  a  volume  which  is  a  personal  note  in  the  margin 
of  the  public  page.  Not  that  I  feel  hurt  in  the  least. 
The  charge — if  it  amounted  to  a  charge  at  all — was 
made  in  the  most  considerate  terms;  in  a  tone  of  re- 
gret. 

My  answer  is  that  if  it  be  true  that  every  novel  con- 
tains an  element  of  autobiography — and  this  can  hardly 


88  Joseph  Conrad 

be  denied,  since  the  creator  can  only  express  himself 
in  his  creation — then  there  are  some  of  us  to  whom 
an  open  display  of  sentiment  is  repugnant.  I  would 
not  unduly  praise  the  virtue  of  restraint.  It  is  often 
merely  temperamental.  But  it  is  not  always  a  sign  of 
coldness.  It  may  be  pride.  There  can  be  nothing 
more  humiliating  than  to  see  the  shaft  of  one's  emo- 
tion miss  the  mark  of  either  laughter  or  tears.  Noth- 
ing more  humiliating!  And  this  for  the  reason  that 
should  the  mark  be  missed,  should  the  open  display 
of  emotion  fail  to  move,  then  it  must  perish  unavoid- 
ably in  disgust  or  contempt.  No  artist  can  be  re- 
proached for  shrinking  from  a  risk  which  only  fools 
run  to  meet  and  only  genius  dare  confront  with  im- 
punity. In  a  task  which  mainly  consists  in  laying  one's 
soul  more  or  less  bare  to  the  world,  a  regard  for 
decency,  even  at  the  cost  of  success,  is  but  the  regard 
for  one's  own  dignity  which  is  inseparably  united 
with  the  dignity  of  one's  work. 

And  then — it  is  very  difficult  to  be  wholly  joyous  or 
wholly  sad  on  this  earth.  The  comic,  when  it  is  human, 
soon  takes  upon  itself  a  face  of  pain ;  and  some  of  our 
griefs  (some  only,  not  all,  for  it  is  the  capacity  for 
suffering  which  makes  man  august  in  the  eyes  of  men) 
have  their  source  in  weaknesses  which  must  be  recog- 
nized with  smiling  compassion  as  the  common  in- 
heritance of  us  all.     Joy  and  sorrow  in  this  world 


A  Familiar  Preface  89 

pass  into  each  other,  mingHng  their  forms  and  their 
murmurs  in  the  twilight  of  Hfe  as  mysterious  as  an 
overshadowed  ocean,  while  the  dazzling  brightness  of 
supreme  hopes  lies  far  off,  fascinating  and  still,  on 
the  distant  edge  of  the  horizon. 

Yes!  I,  too,  would  like  to  hold  the  magic  wand 
giving  that  command  over  laughter  and  tears  which 
is  declared  to  be  the  highest  achievement  of  imagina- 
tive literature.  Only,  to  be  a  great  magician  one  must 
surrender  oneself  to  occult  and  irresponsible  powers, 
either  outside  or  within  one's  breast.  We  have  all 
heard  of  simple  men  selling  their  souls  for  love  or 
power  to  some  grotesque  devil.  The  most  ordinary 
intelligence  can  perceive  without  much  reflection  that 
anything  of  the  sort  is  bound  to  be  a  fooFs  bargain. 
I  don't  lay  claim  to  particular  wisdom  because  of  my 
dislike  and  distrust  of  such  transactions.  It  may  be 
my  sea  training  acting  upon  a  natural  disposition  to 
keep  good  hold  on  the  one  thing  really  mine,  but  the 
fact  is  that  I  have  a  positive  horror  of  losing  even 
for  one  moving  moment  that  full  possession  of  myself 
which  is  the  first  condition  of  good  service.  And  I 
have  carried  my  notion  of  good  service  from  my  ear- 
lier into  my  later  existence.  I,  who  have  never  sought 
in  the  written  word  anything  else  but  a  form  of  the 
Beautiful — I  have  carried  over  that  article  of  creed 
from  the  decks  of  ships  to  the  more  circumscribed 


90  Joseph  Conrad 

space  of  my  desk,  and  by  that  act,  I  suppose,  I  have 
become  permanently  imperfect  in  the  eyes  of  the  in- 
effable company  of  pure  esthetes. 

As  in  political  so  in  literary  action  a  man  wins 
friends  for  himself  mostly  by  the  passion  of  his 
prejudices  and  by  the  consistent  narrowness  of  his 
outlook.  But  I  have  never  been  able  to  love  what  was 
not  lovable  or  hate  what  was  not  hateful  out  of  defer- 
ence for  some  general  principle.  Whether  there  be 
any  courage  in  making  this  admission  I  know  not. 
After  the  middle  turn  of  lifers  way  we  consider  dan- 
gers and  joys  with  a  tranquil  mind.  So  I  proceed 
in  peace  to  declare  that  I  have  always  suspected  in 
the  effort  to  bring  into  play  the  extremities  of  emotions 
the  debasing  touch  of  insincerity.  In  order  to  move 
others  deeply  we  must  deliberately  allow  ourselves  to 
be  carried  away  beyond  the  bounds  of  our  normal  sen- 
sibility— innocently  enough,  perhaps,  and  of  necessity, 
like  an  actor  who  raises  his  voice  on  the  stage  above 
the  pitch  of  natural  conversation — but  still  we  have 
to  do  that.  And  surely  this  is  no  great  sin.  But  the 
danger  lies  in  the  writer  becoming  the  victim  of  his 
own  exaggeration,  losing  the  exact  notion  of  sin- 
cerity, and  in  the  end  coming  to  despise  truth  itself 
as  something  too  cold,  too  blunt  for  his  purpose — as, 
in  fact,  not  good  enough  for  his  insistent  emotion. 


A  Familiar  "Preface  91 

From  laughter  and  tears  the  descent  is  easy  to  snivel- 
ling and  giggles. 

These  may  seem  selfish  considerations;  but  you 
can't,  in  sound  morals,  condemn  a  man  for  taking 
care  of  his  own  integrity.  It  is  his  clear  duty.  And 
least  of  all  can  you  condemn  an  artist  pursuing,  how- 
ever humbly  and  imperfectly,  a  creative  aim.  In  that 
interior  world  where  his  thought  and  his  emotions  go 
seeking  for  the  experience  of  imagined  adventures, 
there  are  no  policemen,  no  law,  no  pressure  of  cir- 
cumstance or  dread  of  opinion  to  keep  him  within 
bounds.  Who  then  is  going  to  say  Nay  to  his  tempta- 
tions if  not  his  conscience? 

And  besides — this,  remember,  is  the  place  and  the 
moment  of  perfectly  open  talk — I  think  that  all  ambi- 
tions are  lawful  except  those  which  climb  upward  on 
the  miseries  or  credulities  of  mankind.  All  intellec- 
tual and  artistic  ambitions  are  permissible,  up  to  and 
even  beyond  the  limit  of  prudent  sanity.  They  can 
hurt  no  one.  If  they  are  mad,  then  so  much  the  worse 
for  the  artist.  Indeed,  as  virtue  is  said  to  be,  such 
ambitions  are  their  own  reward.  Is  it  such  a  very 
mad  presumption  to  believe  in  the  sovereign  power 
of  one's  art,  to  try  for  other  means,  for  other  ways 
of  affirming  this  belief  in  the  deeper  appeal  of  one's 
work?     To  try  to  go  deeper  is  not  to  be  insensible. 


92  Joseph  Conrad 

A  historian  of  hearts  is  not  a  historian  of  emotions, 
yet  he  penetrates  further,  restrained  as  he  may  be, 
since  his  aim  is  to  reach  the  very  fount  of  laughter 
and  tears.  The  sight  of  human  affairs  deserves  ad- 
miration and  pity.  They  are  worthy  of  respect,  too. 
And  he  is  not  insensible  who  pays  them  the  undemon- 
strative tribute  of  a  sigh  which  is  not  a  sob,  and 
of  a  smile  which  is  not  a  grin.  Resignation,  not  mys- 
tic, not  detached,  but  resignation  open-eyed,  conscious, 
and  informed  by  love,  is  the  only  one  of  our  feel- 
ings for  which  it  is  impossible  to  become  a  sham. 

Not  that  I  think  resignation  the  last  word  of  wis- 
dom. I  am  too  much  the  creature  of  my  time  for 
that.  But  I  think  that  the  proper  wisdom  is  to  will 
what  the  gods  will  without,  perhaps,  being  certain 
what  their  will  is — or  even  if  they  have  a  will  of  their 
own.  And  in  this  matter  of  life  and  art  it  is  not  the 
Why  that  matters  so  much  to  our  happiness  as  the 
How.  As  the  Frenchman  said,  ''II  y  a  toujours  la 
manieref  Very  true.  Yes.  There  is  the  manner. 
The  manner  in  laughter,  in  tears,  in  irony,  in  indig- 
nations and  enthusiasms,  in  judgments — and  even  in 
love.  The  manner  in  which,  as  in  the  features  and 
character  of  a  human  face,  the  inner  truth  is  fore- 
shadowed for  those  who  know  how  to  look  at  their 
kind. 

Those  who  read  me  know  my  conviction  that  the 


A  Familiar  Preface  93 

world,  the  temporal  world,  rests  on  a  few  very  simple 
ideas;  so  simple  that  they  must  be  as  old  as  the  hills. 
It  rests  notably,  among  others,  on  the  idea  of  Fidelity. 
At  a  time  when  nothing  which  is  not  revolutionary  in 
some  way  or  other  can  expect  to  attract  much  atten- 
tion I  have  not  been  revolutionary  in  my  writings. 
The  revolutionary  spirit  is  mighty  convenient  in  this, 
that  it  frees  one  from  all  scruples  as  regards  ideas. 
Its  hard,  absolute  optimism  is  repulsive  to  my  mind 
by  the  menace  of  fanaticism  and  intolerance  it  con- 
tains. No  doubt  one  should  smile  at  these  things; 
but,  imperfect  Esthete,  I  am  no  better  Philosopher. 
All  claim  to  special  righteousness  awakens  in  me  that 
scorn  and  anger  from  which  a  philosophical  mind 
should  be  free. 


ON  DRAWING 
By  A.  P.  Herbert 

A.  P.  Herbert  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  the  younger  Eng- 
lish writers,  and  has  done  remarkable  work  in  fields  appar- 
ently incompatible :  light  verse,  humorous  drolleries,  and  a  beau- 
tifully written  tragic  novel,  The  Secret  Battle.  This  last  was 
unquestionably  one  of  the  most  powerful  books  born  of  the  War, 
but  its  sale  was  tragically  small.  The  House  by  the  River,  a 
later  book,  was  also  an  amazingly  competent  and  original  tale, 
apparently  cast  along  the  lines  of  the  conventional  "mystery 
story,"  but  really  a  study  of  selfishness  and  cowardice  done 
with   startling   irony  and   intensity. 

Mr.  Herbert  went  to  Winchester  School  and  New  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  took  his  degree  in  1914.  He  saw  military 
service  at  the  Dardanelles  and  in  France,  and  is  now  on  the 
staff  of  Punch.  There  is  no  young  writer  in  England  from 
whom  one  may  more  confidently  expect  a  continuance  of  fine 
work.  This  airy  and  delicious  little  absurdity  is  a  perfect  ex- 
ample of  what  a  genuine  humorist  can  do. 

H  there  is  still  any  one  in  doubt  as  to  the  value  of  the  old- 
fashioned  classical  training  in  forming  a  lusty  prose  style,  let 
him  examine  Mr.  Herbert's  The  Secret  Battle.  This  book  often 
sounds  oddly  like  a  translation  from  vigorous  Greek — e.g., 
Herodotus.  It  is  lucid,  compact,  logical,  rich  in  telling  epithet, 
informal  and  swift,  li  these  are  not  the  cardinal  prose  virtues, 
what  are? 

It  is  commonly  said  that  everybody  can  sing  in  the 
bathroom;  and  this  is  true.  Singing  is  very  easy. 
Drawing,  though,  is  much  more  difficult.  I  have 
devoted  a  good  deal  of  time  to  Drawing,  one  way 
and  another;  I  have  to  attend  a  great  many  committees 
and  public  meetings,  and  at  such  functions  I  find 
that  Drawing  is  almost  the  only  Art  one  can  safis- 

94 


On  Drawing  95 

factorily  pursue  during  the  speeches.  One  really  can- 
not sing  during  the  speeches;  so  as  a  rule  I  draw. 
I  do  not  say  that  I  am  an  expert  yet,  but  after  a  few 
more  meetings  I  calculate  that  I  shall  know  Drawing 
as  well  as  it  can  be  known. 

The  first  thing,  of  course,  is  to  get  on  to  a  really 
good  committee;  and  by  a  good  committee  I  mean 
a  committee  that  provides  decent  materials.  An  ordi- 
nary departmental  committee  is  no  use :  generally  they 
only  give  you  a  couple  of  pages  of  lined  foolscap  and 
no  white  blotting-paper,  and  very  often  the  pencils 
are  quite  soft.  White  blotting-paper  is  essential.  I 
know  of  no  material  the  spoiling  of  which  gives  so 
much  artistic  pleasure — except  perhaps  snow.  Indeed, 
if  I  was  asked  to  choose  between  making  pencil-marks 
on  a  sheet  of  white  blotting-paper  and  making  foot- 
marks on  a  sheet  of  white  snow  I  should  be  in  a  thing- 
ummy. 

Much  the  best  committees  from  the  point  of  view 
of  material  are  committees  about  business  which  meet 
at  business  premises — shipping  offices,  for  choice.  One 
of  the  Pacific  Lines  has  the  best  white  blotting-paper 
I  know ;  and  the  pencils  there  are  a  dream.  I  am  sure 
the  directors  of  that  firm  are  Drawers;  for  they  al- 
ways give  you  two  pencils,  one  hard  for  doing  noses, 
and  one  soft  for  doing  hair. 

When  you  have  selected  your  committee  and  the 


{ 


96  A,  P.  Herbert 

speeches    are   well    away,    the   Drawing   be- 
gins.    Much  the  best  thing  to  draw  is  a  man. 
Not  the  chairman,  or  Lord  Pommery  Quint, 
or  any  member  of  the  committee,  but  just  A 
Man.    Many  novices  make  the  mistake  of  se-    pic.  i 
lecting  a  subject  for  their  Art  before  they 
begin;  usually  they  select  the  dhairman.     And  when 
they  find  it  is  more  like  Mr.  Gladstone  they  are  dis- 
couraged.   If  they  had  waited  a  little  it  could  have  been 
Mr.  Gladstone  ofBcially. 

As  a  rule  I  begin  with  the  forehead  and 
work  down  to  the  chin  (Fig.  i). 

When  I  have  done  the  outline  I  put  in  the 
eye.  This  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  parts 
of  Drawing;  one  is  never  quite  sure  where 

^^^'  ^  the  eye  goes.  If,  however,  it  is  not  a  good 
eye,  a  useful  tip  is  to  give  the  man  spectacles;  this 
generally  makes  him  a  clergyman,  but  it  helps  the 
eye  (Fig.  2). 

Now  you  have  to  outline  the  rest  of  the  head,  and 
this  is  rather  a  gamble.    Personally,  I  go  in 
for  strong  heads  (Fig.  3). 

I  am  afraid  it  is  not  a  strong  neck;  I 
expect  he  is  an  author,  and  is  not  well  fed. 
But  that  is  the  worst  of  strong  heads ;  they 
make  it  so  difficult  to  join  up  the  chin  and 
the  back  of  the  neck.  ^^'  ^ 


On  Drawing  97 

The  next  thing  to  do  is  to  put  in  the  ear ;  and  once 
you  have  done  this  the  rest  is  easy.  Ears  are  much 
more  difficult  than  eyes  (Fig.  4). 

I  hope  that  is  right.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  a  little 
too  far  to  the  southward.  But  it  is  done  now.  And 
once  you  have  put  in  the  ear  you  can't  go  back;  not 
unless  you  are  on  a  very  good  committee  which  pro- 
vides india-rubber  as  well  as  pencils. 

Now  I  do  the  hair.  Hair  may  either  be  very  fuzzy 
or  black,  or  lightish  and  thin.  It  de- 
pends chiefly  on  what  sort  of  pencils  are 
provided.  For  myself  I  prefer  black  hair, 
because  then  the  parting  shows  up  bet- 
ter (Fig.  5). 
^  Until  one  draws  hair  one  never  real- 

FlG.  4 

izes  what  large  heads  people  have.  Doing 
the  hair  takes  the  Whole  of  a  speech,  usually,  even  one 
of  the  chairman's  speeches. 

This  is  not  one  of  my  best  men;  I  am  sure  the  ear 
is  in  the  \vrong  place.  And  I  am  inclined  to  think 
he  ought  to  have  spectacles.  Only  then  he  would 
be  a  clergyman,  and  I  have  decided  that 
he  is  Mr.  Philip  Gibbs  at  the  age  of 
twenty.  So  he  must  carry  on  with  his  eye 
as  it  is. 

I  find  that  all  my  best  men  face  to  the 
W€St;  it  is  a  curious  thing.    Sometimes  I  ^°*  ^ 


98  A,  P.  Herbert 

draw  two  men  facing  each  other,  but  the  one  facing 
east  is  always  a  dud. 

There,  you  see  (Fig.  6)  ?  The  dne  on  the  right 
is  a  Bolshevik;  he  has  a  low  forehead  and  beetling 
brows — a  most  unpleasant  man.  Yet  he  has  a  power- 
ful face.  The  one  on  the  left  was  meant  to  be  an- 
other Bolshevik,  arguing  with  him.    But  he  has  turned 


ft 


Fig.  6 


out  to  be  a  lady,  so  I  have  had  to  give  her  a  "bun." 
She  is  a  lady  solicitor ;  but  I  don't  know  how  she  came 
to  be  talking  to  the  Bolshevik. 

When  you  have  learned  how  to  do  men,  the  only 
other  things  in  Drawing  are  Perspective  and  Land* 
scape. 

PERSPECTIVE  is  great  fun :  the  best  thing  to  do 
is  a  long  French  road  with  telegraph  poles  (Fig.  7). 

I  have  put  in  a  fence  as  well. 

LANDSCAPE  is  chiefly  composed  of  hills  and  trees. 
Trees  are  the  most  amusing,  especially  fluflfy  trees. 

Here  is  a  Landscape  (Fig.  8). 

Somehow  or  other  a  man  has  got  into  this  land- 


On  Drawing  99 

scape;  and,  as  luck  would  have  it,  it  is  Napoleon. 
Apart  from  this  it  is  not  a  bad  landscape. 


Fig.  7 

But  It  takes  a  very  long  speech  to  get  an  ambitious 
piece  of  work  like  this  through. 


Fig.  8 


There  is  one  other  thing  I  ought  to  have  said. 
Never  attempt  to  draw  a  man  front-face.  It  can't 
be  done. 


O.  HENRY 
By  O.  W.  Firkins 

Several  years  ago  I  turned  to  Who's  Who  in  America  in  hope 
f)f  finding  some  information  about  O.  W.  Firkins,  whose  brilHant 
reviews — chiefly  of  poetry — were  appearing  in  The  Nation.  I 
found  no  entry,  but  every  few  months  I  would  again  rummage 
that  stout  red  volume  with  the  same  intention,  forgetting  that 
I  had  done  so  before  without  success.  It  seemed  hardly  credible 
that  a  critic  so  brilliant  had  been  overlooked  by  the  industrious 
compilers  of  that  work,  which  Includes  hundreds  of  hacks  and 
fourflushers.  When  gathering  the  contents  of  this  book  I  tried 
Who's  Who  again,  still  without  result.  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Firkins 
pleading  for  biographical  details;  modestly,  but  firmly,  he  de- 
nied me. 

So  all  I  can  tell  you  is  this,  that  Mr.  Firkins  is  to  my  mind 
one  of  the  half-dozen  most  sparkling  critics  in  this  country. 
One  sometimes  feels  that  he  is  carried  a  little  past  his  destina- 
tion by  the  sheer  gusto  and  hilarity  of  his  antitheses  and  para- 
doxes. That  is  not  so,  however,  in  this  essay  about  O.  Henry, 
an  author  who  has  often  been  grotesquely  mispraised  (I  did  not 
say  overpraised)  by  people  incompetent  to  appreciate  his  true 
greatness.  Mr.  Robert  Cortes  Holliday,  in  an  essay  called  "The 
Amazing  Failure  of  O.  Henry,"  said  that  O.  Henry  created  no 
memorable  characters.  Mr.  Firkins  suggests  the  obvious  but 
satisfying  answer — New  York  itself  is  his  triumph.  The  New 
York  of  O.  Henry,  already  almost  erased  physically,  remains  a 
personality  and  an  identity. 

Mr.  Firkins  is  professor  of  English  at  the  University  of 
Minnesota,  and  a  contributing  editor  of  The  Weekly  Revic7v, 
in  which  this  essay  first  appeared  in  September,  1919.  The 
footnotes  are,  of  course,  his  own. 

There  are  two  opinions  concerning  O.  Henry.  The 
middle  class  views  him  as  the  impersonation  of  vigor 
and  brilliancy;  part  of  the  higher  criticism  sees  in  him 
little  but  sensation  and  persiflage.  Between  these  views 
there  is  a  natural  relation;  the  gods  of  the  heathens 

ICO 


O.  Henry  loi 

are  ipso  facto  the  demons  of  Christianity.  Unmixed 
assertions,  however,  are  commonly  mixtures  of  truth 
and  falsehood;  there  is  room  to-day  for  an  estimate 
which  shall  respect  both  opinions  and  adopt  neither. 
There  is  one  literary  trait  in  ^which  I  am  unable 
to  name  any  wiiter  of  tales  in^^iiy  v.litei.'ajture-.who 
surpasses  O.  Henry.*  It  is » not  f<riraat7"-,ot:  styea 
secondary  among  literary  merits;  it  is  less  a  value 
per  se  than  the  condition  or  foundation  of  values. 
But  its  utility  is  manifest,  and  it  is  rare  among  men: 
Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  prove  the  possibility  of  its 
absence  in  masters  of  that  very  branch  of  art  in 
which  its  presence  would  seem  to  be  imperative.  I 
refer  to  the  designing  of  stories — not  to  the  primary 
intuition  or  to  skill  in  development,  in  both  of  which 
finer  phases  of  invention  O.  Henry  has  been  largely 
and   frequently  surpassed,  but  to  the  disposition  of 


♦William  Sidney  Porter,  1862-1910,  son  of  Algernon  Sidney 
Porter,  physician,  was  born,  bred,  and  meagerly  educated  in 
Greensboro,  North  Carolina.  In  Greensboro  he  was  drug  clerk; 
in  Texas  he  was  amateur  ranchman,  land-office  clerk,  editor,  and 
bank  teller.  Convicted  of  misuse  of  bank  funds  on  insufficient 
evidence  (which  he  supplemented  by  the  insanity  of  flight),  he 
passed  three  years  and  three  months  in  the  Ohio  State  Peniten- 
tiary at  Columbus.  Release  was  the  prelude  to  life  in  New 
York,  to  story-writing,  to  rapid  and  wide-spread  fame.  Latterly, 
his  stories,  published  in  New  York  journals  and  in  book  form, 
were  consumed  by  the  public  with  an  avidity  which  his  prema- 
ture death,  in  1910,  scarcely  checked.  The  pen-name,  O.  Henry, 
is  almost  certainly  borrowed  from  a  French  chemist,  Etienne- 
Ossian  Henry,  whose  abridged  name  he  fell  upon  in  his  phar- 
macal  researches.  See  the  interesting  "O.  Henry  Biography"  by 
C.  Alphonso  Smith. 


I02  O.  PV.  Firkins 

masses,  to  the  blocking-out  of  plots.  That  a  half' 
educated  American  provincial  should  have  been  orig- 
inal in  a  field  in  which  original  men  have  been  copy- 
ists is  enough  of  itself  to  make  his  personality  ob- 
servable. 

Illustration,  even  of  conceded  truths,  is  rarely  super- 
fiiJoiis;  I 'Supply  two  instances.  Two  lads,  parting  in 
New  York,  agree  to  meet  "After  Twenty  Years"  at 
a  specified  hour,  date,  and  corner.  Both  are  faithful; 
but  the  years  in  which  their  relation  has  slept  in  mutual 
silence  and  ignorance  have  turned  the  one  into  a 
dashing  criminal,  the  other  into  a  sober  ofificer  of  the 
law.  Behind  the  picturesque  and  captivating  rendez- 
vous lurks  a  powerful  dramatic  situation  and  a  moral 
problem  of  arresting  gravity.  This  is  dealt  with  in 
six  pages  of  the  "Four  Million."  The  "Furnished 
Room,"  two  stories  further  on,  occupies  twelve  pages. 
Through  the  wilderness  of  apartments  on  the  'lower 
West  Side  a  man  trails  a  woman.  Chance  leads  him 
to  the  very  room  in  which  the  woman  ended  her  life 
the  week  before.  Between  him  and  the  truth  the 
avarice  of  a  sordid  landlady  interposes  the  curtain  of 
a  lie.  In  the  bed  in  which  the  girl  slept  and  died,  the 
man  sleeps  and  dies,  and  the  entrance  of  the  deadly 
fumes  into  his  nostrils  shuts  the  sinister  and  mourn- 
ful coincidence  forever  from  the  knowledge  of  man- 
kind.   O.  Henry  gave  these  tales  neither  extension  nor 


O.  Henry  103 

prominence;  so  far  as  I  know,  they  were  received 
without  bravos  or  salvos.  The  distinction  of  a  body 
of  work  in  which  such  specimens  are  undistinguished 
hardly  requires  comment. 

A  few  types  among  these  stories  may  be  specified. 
There  are  the  Sydney  Cartonisms,  defined  in  the  name ; 
love-stories  in  which  divided  hearts,  or  simply  divided 
persons,  are  brought  together  by  the  strategy  of  chance; 
hoax  stories — deft  pictures  of  smiling  roguery;  "prince 
and  pauper"  stories,  in  which  wealth  and  poverty  face 
each  other,  sometimes  enact  each  other;  disguise 
stories,  in  which  the  wrong  clothes  often  draw  the 
wrong  bullets;  complemental  stories,  in  which  Jim 
sacrifices  his  beloved  watch  to  buy  combs  for  Delia, 
who,  meanwhile,  has  sacrificed  her  beloved  hair  to 
buy  a  chain  for  Jim. 

This  imperfect  list  is  eloquent  in  its  way;  it  smooths 
our  path  to  the  assertion  that  O.  Henry's  specialty  is 
the  enlistment  of  original  method  in  the  service  of 
traditional  appeals.  The  ends  are  the  ends  of  fifty 
years  ago;  O.  Henry  transports  us  by  aeroplane 
the  old  homestead.* 


*  O  Henry's  stories  have  been  known  to  coincide  with  earlier 
work  in  a  fashion  which  dims  the  novelty  of  the  tale  without 
clouding  the  originality  of  the  author.  I  thought  the  brilliant 
"Harlem  Tragedy"  (in  the  "Trimmed  Lamp")  unique  through 
sheer  audacity,  but  the  other  day  I  found  its  motive  repeated 
with  singular  exactness  in  Montesquieu's  "Lettres  Persanes" 
(Letter  LI). 


I04  O.  W.  Firkins 

Criticism  of  O.  Henry  falls  into  those  superlatives 
and  antitheses  in  which  his  own  faculty  delighted. 
In  mechanical  invention  he  is  almost  the  leader  of  his 
race.  In  a  related  quality — ^a  defect — his  leadership 
is  even  more  conspicuous.  I  doubt  if  the  sense  of  the 
probable,  or,  more  precisely,  of  the  available  in  the 
improbable,  ever  became  equally  weakened  or  dead- 
ened in  a  man  who  made  his  living  by  its  exercise. 
The  improbable,  even  the  impossible,  has  its  place 
in  art,  though  that  place  is  relatively  low;  and  it  is 
curious  that  works  such  as  the  "Arabian  Nights"  and 
Grimm's  fairy  tales,  whose  stock-in-trade  is  the  in- 
credible, are  the  works  which  give  almost  no  trouble 
on  the  score  of  verisimilitude.  The  truth  is  that  we 
reject  not  what  it  is  impossible  to  prove,  or  even  what 
it  is  possible  to  disprove,  Kut  what  it  is  impossible  to 
imagine.  O.  Henry  asks  us  to  imagine  the  unimag- 
inable— that  is  his  crime. 

The  right  and  wrong  improbabilities  may  be  illus- 
trated from  two  burglar  stories.  "Sixes  and  Sevens" 
contains  an  excellent  tale  of  a  burglar  and  a  citizen 
who  fraternize,  in  a  comic  midnight  interview,  on  the 
score  of  their  common  sufferings  from  rheumatism. 
This  feeling  in  practice  would  not  triumph  over  fear 
and  greed;  but  the  feeling  is  natural,  and  everybody 
with  a  grain  of  nature  in  him  can  imagine  its  triumph. 
Nature  tends  towards  that  impossibility,  and  art,  lift- 


O.  Henry  105 

ing,  so  to  speak,  the  lid  which  fact  drops  upon  nature, 
reveals  nature  in  belying  fact.  In  another  story,  in 
"Whirligigs,"  a  nocturnal  interview  takes  place  in 
which  a  burglar  and  a  small  boy  discuss  the  etiquette 
of  their  mutual  relation  by  formulas  derived  from 
short  stories  with  which  both  are  amazingly  conversant. 
This  is  the  wrong  use  of  the  improbable.  Even  an 
imagination  inured  to  the  virtues  of  burglars  and  the 
maturity  of  small  boys  will  have  naught  to  do  with  thi^ 
insanity. 

But  O.  Henry  can  go  further  yet.  There  are  inven- 
tions in  his  tales  the  very  utterance  of  which — not  the 
mere  substance  but  the  utterance — on  the  part  of  a 
man  not  writing  from  Bedlam  or  for  Bedlam  impresses 
the  reader  as  incredible.  In  a  "Comedy  in  Rubber," 
two  persons  become  so  used  to  spectatorship  at  trans- 
actions in  the  street  that  they  drift  into  the  part  of 
spectators  when  the  transaction  is  their  own  wedding. 
Can  human  daring  or  human  folly  go  further?  O. 
Henry  is  on  the  spot  to  prove  that  they  can.  In 
the  "Romance  of  a  Busy  Broker,"  a  busy  and  forget- 
ful man,  in  a  freak  of  absent-mindedness,  offers  his 
hand  to  the  stenographer  whom  he  had  married  the 
night  before. 

The  other  day,  in  the  journal  of  the  Goncourts,  I 
came  upon  the  following  sentence:  "Never  will  the 
imagination  approach  the  improbabilities  and  the  an- 


I06  O.  W.  Firkins 

titheses  of  truth'*  (II,  9).  This  is  dated  February  21, 
1862.  Truth  had  still  the  advantage.  O.  Henry  was 
not  born  till  September  of  the  same  year. 

Passing  on  to  style,  we  are  still  in  the  land  of  anti- 
thesis. The  style  is  gross — and  fine.  Of  the  plenitude 
of  its  stimulus,  there  can  be  no  question.  In  "Sixes 
and  Sevens,"  a  young  man  sinking  under  accidental 
morphia,  is  kept  awake  and  alive  by  shouts,  kicks,  and 
blows.  O.  Henry's  public  seems  imaged  in  that  young 
man.  But  I  draw  a  sharp  distinction  between  the  tone 
of  the  style  and  its  pattern.  The  tone  is  brazen,  or, 
better  perhaps,  brassy;  its  self-advertisement  is  incor^ 
rigible;  it  reeks  with  that  air  of  performance  which  i^ 
opposed  to  real  efficiency.  But  the  pattern  is  another 
matter.  The  South  rounds  its  periods  like  its  vowels; 
O.  Henry  has  read,  not  widely,  but  wisely,  in  his  boy- 
hood. His  sentences  are  huilt — a  rare  thing  in  the  best 
writers  of  to-day.  In  conciseness,  that  Spartan  virtue, 
he  was  strong,  though  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
tale-teller  was  now  and  then  hustled  from  the  rostrum 
by  his  rival  and  enemy,  the  talker.  He  can  introduce 
a  felicity  with  a  noiselessness  that  numbers  him  for 
a  flying  second  among  the  sovereigns  of  English.  "In 
one  of  the  second-floor  front  windows  Mrs.  McCaskey 
awaited  her  husband.  Supper  was  cooling  on  the 
table.    Its  heat  went  into  Mrs.  McCaskey." 

I  regret  the  tomfoolery;  I  wince  at  the  slang.    Yet 


O.  Henry  107 

even  for  these  levities  with  which  his  pages  are  so 
liberally  besprinkled  or  bedaubed,  some  half -apology 
may  be  circumspectly  urged.  In  nonsense  his  ease  is 
consummate.  A  horseman  who  should  dismount  to 
pick  up  a  bauble  would  be  childish;  O.  Henry  picks 
it  up  without  dismounting.  Slang,  again,  is  most 
pardonable  in  the  man  with  whom  its  use  is  least  ex- 
clusive and  least  necessary.  There  are  men  who,  going 
for  a  walk,  take  their  dogs  with  them ;  there  are  other 
men  who  give  a  walk  to  their  dogs.  Substitute  slang 
for  the  dog,  and  the  superiority  of  the  first  class  to 
the  second  will  exactly  illustrate  the  superiority  of 
O.  Henry  to  the  abject  traffickers  in  slang. 

In  the  "Pendulum"  Katy  has  a  new  patch  in  her 
crazy  quilt  which  the  ice  man  cut  from  the  end  of 
his  four-in-hand.  In  the  "Day  We  Celebrate,"  thread- 
ing the  mazes  of  a  banana  grove  is  compared  to  "pag- 
ing the  palm  room  of  a  New  York  hotel  for  a  man 
named  Smith."  O.  Henry's  is  the  type  of  mind  to 
which  images  like  this  four-in-hand  and  this  palm  room 
are  presented  in  exhaustless  abundance  and  unflagging 
continuity.  There  was  hardly  an  object  in  the  merry- 
go-round  of  civilized  life  that  had  not  offered  at  least 
an  end  or  an  edge  to  the  avidity  of  his  consuming 
eyes.  Nothing  escapes  from  the  besom  of  his  allu- 
siveness,  and  the  style  is  streaked  and  pied,  almost  to 
monotony,  by  the  accumulation  of  livelv  details. 


lo8  O.  W.  Firkins 

If  O.  Henry's  style  was  crude,  it  was  also  rare;  but 
it  is  part  of  the  grimness  of  the  bargain  that  destiny 
drives  with  us  that  the  mixture  of  the  crude  and  the 
rare  should  be  a  crude  mixture,  as  the  sons  of  whites 
and  negroes  are  numbered  with  the  blacks.  In  the 
kingdom  of  style  O.  Henry's  estates  were  princely, 
but,  to  pay  his  debts,  he  must  have  sold  them  all. 

Thus  far  in  our  inquiry  extraordinary  merits  have 
been  offset  by  extraordinary  defects.  To  lift  our 
author  out  of  the  class  of  brilliant  and  skilful  enter- 
tainers, more  is  needed.  Is  more  forthcoming?  I 
should  answer,  yes.  In  O.  Henry,  above  the  knowl- 
edge of  setting,  which  is  clear  and  first-hand,  but 
subsidiary,  above  the  order  of  events,  which  is,  gen- 
erally speaking,  fantastic,  above  the  emotions,  which 
are  sound  and  warm,  but  almost  purely  derivative, 
there  is  a  rather  small,  but  impressive  body  of  first- 
hand perspicacities  and  reactions.  On  these  his  en- 
durance may  hinge. 

I  name,  first  of  all,  O.  Henry's  feeling  for  New  York. 
With  the  exception  of  his  New  Orleans,  I  care  little 
for  his  South  and  West,  which  are  a  boyish  South 
and  West,  and  as  little,  or  even  less,  for  his  Spanish- 
American  communities.  My  objection  to  his  opera- 
bouffe  republics  is,  not  that  they  are  inadequate  as  re- 
publics (for  that  we  were  entirely  prepared),  but  that 
they  are  inadequate  as  opera.    He  lets  us  see  his  show 


O.  Henry  109 

from  the  coulisses.  The  pretense  lacks  standing  even 
among  pretenses,  and  a  faith  must  be  induced  before 
its  removal  can  enliven  us.  But  his  New  York  has 
quality.  It  is  of  the  family  of  Dickens's  London  and 
Hugo's  Paris,  though  it  is  plainly  a  cadet  in  the  fam- 
ily. Mr.  Howells,  in  his  profound  and  valuable  study 
of  the  metropolis  in  a  "Hazard  of  New  Fortunes,"  is 
penetrating;  O.  Henry,  on  the  other  hand,  is  pene- 
trated. His  New  York  is  intimate  and  clinging;  it  is 
caught  in  the  mesh  of  the  imagination. 

O.  Henry  had  rare  but  precious  insights  into  human 
destiny  and  human  nature.  In  these  pictures  he  is  not 
formally  accurate;  he  could  never  or  seldom  set  his 
truth  before  us  in  that  moderation  and  proportion 
which  truths  acquire  in  the  stringencies  of  actuality. 
He  was  apt  to  present  his  insight  in  a  sort  of  parable 
or  allegory,  to  upraise  it  before  the  eyes  of  mankind 
on  the  mast  or  flagpole  of  some  vehement  exaggera- 
tion. Epigram  shows  us  truth  in  the  embrace  of  a  /ie, 
and  tales  which  are  dramatized  epigrams  are  subject 
to  a  like  constraint.  The  force,  however,  is  real.  I 
could  scarcely  name  anywhere  a  more  powerful  expo- 
sition of  fatality  than  "Roads  of  Destiny,"  the  initial 
story  in  the  volume  which  appropriates  its  title.  It 
wanted  only  the  skilled  romantic  touch  of  a  Gautier 
or  Stevenson  to  enroll  this  tale  among  the  master- 
pieces of  its  kind  in  contemporary  letters. 


no  O.  W.  Firkins 

Now  and  then  the  ingredient  of  parable  is  hardly 
perceptible ;  we  draw  close  to  the  bare  fact.  O.  Henry, 
fortunate  in  plots,  is  peculiarly  fortunate  in  his  re- 
nunciation of  plot.  If  contrivance  is  lucrative,  it  is 
also  costly.  There  is  an  admirable  little  story  called 
the  "Pendulum"  (in  the  "Trimmed  Lamp"),  the  sim- 
plicity of  whose  fable  would  have  satisfied  Coppee 
or  Hawthorne.  A  man  in  a  flat,  by  force  of  custom, 
has  come  to  regard  his  wife  as  a  piece  of  furniture. 
She  departs  for  a  few  hours,  and,  by  the  break  in 
usage,  is  restored,  in  his  consciousness,  to  womanhood. 
She  comes  back,  and  relapses  into  furniture.  That 
is  all.  O.  Henry  could  not  have  given  us  less — or 
more.  Farcical,  clownish,  if  you  will,  the  story  re- 
sembles those  clowns  who  carry  daggers  under  their 
motley.  When  John  Perkins  takes  up  that  inauspicious 
hat,  the  reader  smiles,  and  quails.  I  will  mention  a 
few  other  examples  of  insights  with  the  proviso  that 
they  are  not  specially  commended  to  the  man  whose 
quest  in  the  short  story  is  the  electrifying  or  the  cal- 
orific. They  include  the  "Social  Triangle,"  the  "Mak- 
ing of  a  New  Yorker,"  and  the  "Foreign  Policy  of 
Company  99,"  all  in  the  "Trimmed  Lamp,"  the  "Brief 
Debut  of  Tildy"  in  the  "Four  Million,"  and  the  "Com- 
plete Life  of  John  Hopkins"  in  the  "Voice  of  the 
City."  I  cannot  close  this  summary  of  good  points 
without  a  passing  reference  to  the  not  unsuggestive 


O.  Henry  III 

portrayal  of  humane  and  cheerful  scoundrels  in  the 
^'Gentle  Grafter."  The  picture,  if  false  to  species,  is 
faithful  to  genus. 

O.  Henry's  egregiousness,  on  the  superficial  side, 
both  in  merits  and  defects,  reminds  us  of  those  park 
benches  so  characteristic  of  his  tales  which  are  occu- 
pied by  a  millionaire  at  one  end  and  a  mendicant  at 
the  other.  But,  to  complete  the  image,  we  must  add 
as  a  casual  visitor  to  that  bench  a  seer  or  a  student, 
who,  sitting  down  between  the  previous  comers  and 
suspending  the  flamboyancies  of  their  dialogue,  should 
gaze  with  the  pensive  eye  of  Goldsmith  or  Addison 
upon  the  passing  crowd. 

In  O.  Henry  American  journalism  and  the  Victorian 
tradition  meet.  His  mind,  quick  to  don  the  guise  of 
modernity,  was  impervious  to  its  spirit.  The  specifi- 
cally modern  movements,  the  scientific  awakening,  the 
religious  upheaval  and  subsidence,  the  socialistic  gospel, 
the  enfranchisement  of  women — these  never  interfered 
with  his  artless  and  joyous  pursuit  of  the  old  romantic 
motives  of  love,  hate,  wealth,  poverty,  gentility,  dis- 
guise, and  crime.  On  two  points  a  moral  record  which, 
in  his  literature,  is  everywhere  sound  and  stainless, 
rises  almost  to  nobility.  In  an  age  when  sexual  excite- 
ment had  become  available  and  permissible,  this  wor- 
shiper of  stimulus  never  touched  with  so  much  as  a 
fingertip  that  insidious  and  meretricious  fruit.     The 


112  O,  W,  Firkins 

second  point  is  his  feeling  for  underpaid  working-girls. 
His  passionate  concern  for  this  wrong  derives  a 
peculiar  emphasis  from  the  general  refusal  of  his  books 
to  bestow  countenance  or  notice  on  philanthropy  in  its 
collective  forms.  When,  in  his  dream  of  Heaven,  he 
is  asked:  "Are  you  one  of  the  bunch?"  (meaning  one 
of  the  bunch  of  grasping  and  grinding  employers), 
the  response,  through  all  its  slang,  is  soul-stirring. 
"  *Not  on  your  immortality,'  said  I.  Tm  only  the 
fellow  that  set  fire  to  an  orphan  asylum  and  murdered 
a  bhnd  man  for  his  pennies.'  "  The  author  of  that 
retort  may  have  some  difficulty  with  the  sentries  that 
watch  the  entrance  of  Parnassus;  he  will  have  none 
with  the  gatekeeper  of  the  New  Jerusalem. 


:  THE  MOWING  OF  A  FIELD 

By  HiLAiRE  Belloc 

We  have  not  had  in  our  time  a  more  natural-born  essayist,  of 
the  scampering  sort,  than  Hilaire  Belloc.  He  is  an  infectious 
fellow :  if  you  read  him  much  you  will  find  yourself  trying  to 
imitate  him;  there  is  no  harm  in  doing  so:  he  himself  caught 
the  trick  from  Rabelais.  I  do  not  propose  to  rehash  here  the 
essay  I  wrote  about  him  in  a  book  called  Shandygaff.  You  can 
refer  to  it  there,  which  will  be  good  business  all  round.  I  know 
it  is  a  worthy  essay,  for  much  of  it  was  cribbed  from  an  article 
by  Mr.  Thomas  Seccombe,  which  an  American  paper  lifted  from 
the  English  journal  which,  presumably,  paid  Mr.  Seccombe  for 
it.  I  wrote  it  for  the  Boston  Transcript,  where  I  knew  the 
theft  would  be  undetected ;  and  in  shoveling  together  some  stuff 
for  a  book  (that  was  in  1917,  the  cost  of  living  was  rising  at  an 
angle  of  forty-five  degrees,  as  so  many  graphs  have  shown)  I  put 
it  in,  forgetting  (until  too  late)  that  some  of  it  was  absolute 
plunder. 

Mr.  Chesterton  once  said  something  like  this :  "It  is  a  mistake 
to  think  that  thieves  do  not  respect  property.  They  only  wish 
it  to  become  their  property,  so  that  they  may  more  perfectly  re- 
spect it." 

And  by  the  way,  Max  Beerbohm's  parody  of  Belloc,  in  A 
Christmas  Garland,  is  something  not  to  be  missed.  It  is  one 
of  the  best  proofs  that  Belloc  is  a  really  great  artist.  Beerbohm 
does  not  waste  his  time  mimicking  the  small  fry. 

Hilaire  Belloc — son  of  a  French  father  and  an  English  mother; 
his  happy  junction  of  both  English  and  French  genius  in  prose 
is  hereditary — was  born  in  France  in  1870.  He  lived  in  Sussex 
as  a  child;  served  in  the  French  field  artillery;  was  at  Balliol 
College,  Oxford,  1893-95,  and  sat  four  years  (1906-10)  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  Certainly  you  must  read  (among  his  gath- 
erings of  essays)  On  Nothing,  On  Everything,  On  Something, 
Hills  and  the  Sea,  First  and  Last;  then  you  can  read  The  Path 
to  Rome,  and  The  Four  Men,  and  Caliban's  Guide  to  Letters 
and  The  Pyrenees  and  Marie  Antoinette.  If  you  desire  the 
bouillon  (or  bullion)  of  his  charm,  there  is  A  Picked  Company, 
a  selection  (by  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas)  of  his  most  representative  work. 
It  is  published  by  Methuen  and  Company,  .36  Essex  Street  W.  C, 
London. 

Having  done  so,  come  again:  we  will  go  off  in  a  comer  and 
talk  about  Mr.  Belloc. 

11.^ 


114  Hilaire  Belloc 

There  is  a  valley  in  South  England  remote  from 
ambition  and  from  fear,  where  the  passage  of 
strangers  is  rare  and  unperceived,  and  where  the  scent 
of  the  grass  in  summer  is  breathed  only  by  those  who 
are  native  to  that  unvisited  land.  The  roads  to  the 
Channel  do  not  traverse  it;  they  choose  upon  either 
side  easier  passes  over  the  range.  One  track  alont 
leads  up  through  it  to  the  hills,  and  this  is  changeable  ; 
now  green  where  men  have  little  occasion  to  go,  now 
a  good  road  where  it  nears  the  homesteads  and  the 
barns.  The  woods  grow  steep  above  the  slopes;  they 
reach  sometimes  the  very  summit  of  the  heights,  or, 
when  they  cannot  attain  them,  fill  in  and  clothe  the 
coombes.  And,  in  between,  along  the  floor  of  the  val- 
ley, deep  pastures  and  their  silence  are  bordered  by 
lawns  of  chalky  grass  and  the  small  yew  trees  of  the 
Downs. 

The  clouds  that  visit  its  sky  reveal  themselves  beyond 
the  one  great  rise,  and  sail,  white  and  enormous,  to  the 
other,  and  sink  beyond  that  other.  But  the  plains 
above  which  they  have  traveled  and  the  Weald  to 
which  they  go,  the  people  of  the  valley  cannot  see  and 
hardly  recall.  The  wind,  when  it  reaches  such  fields, 
is  no  longer  a  gale  from  the  salt,  but  fruitful  and  soft, 
an  inland  breeze ;  and  those  whose  blood  was  nourished 
here  feel  in  that  wind  the  fruitfulness  of  our  orchards 
and  all  the  life  that  all  things  draw  from  the  air. 


\ 


The  Mowing  of  a  Field  115 

In  this  place,  when  I  was  a  boy,  I  pushed  through  a 
fringe  of  beeches  that  made  a  complete  screen  between 
me  and  the  world,  and  I  came  to  a  glade  called  No 
Man's  Land.  I  climbed  beyond  it,  and  I  was  surprised 
and  glad,  because  from  the  ridge  of  that  glade,  I  saw 
the  sea.    To  this  place  very  lately  I  rreturned. 

The  many  things  that  I  recovered  as  I  came  up  the 
countryside  were  not  less  charming  than  when  a  dis- 
tant memory  had  enshrined  them,  but  much  more. 
Whatever  veil  is  thrown  by  a  longing  recollection  had 
not  intensified  nor  even  made  more  mysterious  the 
beauty  of  that  happy  ground ;  not  in  my  very  dreams 
of  morning  had  I,  in  exile,  seen  it  more  beloved  or 
more  rare.  Much  also  that  I  had  forgotten  now  re- 
turned to  me  as  I  approached — a  group  of  elms,  a  little 
turn  of  the  parson's  wall,  a  small  paddock  beyond  the 
graveyard  close,  cherished  by  one  man,  with  a  low 
wall  of  very  old  stone  guarding  it  all  round.  And  all 
these  things  fulfilled  and  amplified  my  delight,  till  even 
the  good  vision  of  the  place,  which  I  had  kept  so  many 
years,  left  me  and  was  replaced  by  its  better  reality. 
"Here,"  I  said  to  myself,  "is  a  symbol  of  what  some 
say  is  reserved  for  the  soul :  pleasure  of  a  kind  which 
cannot  be  imagined  save  in  a  moment  when  at  last  it  is 
attained." 

When  I  came  to  my  own  gate  and  my  own  field,  and 
had  before  me  the  house  I  knew,  I  looked  around  a 


Il6  Hilaire  Belloc 

little  (though  it  was  already  evening),  and  I  saw  that 
the  grass  was  standing  as  it  should  stand  when  it  is 
ready  for  the  scythe.  For  in  this,  as  in  everything 
that  a  man  can  do — of  those  things  at  least  which  are 
very  old — there  is  an  exact  moment  when  they  are 
done  best.  And  it  has  been  remarked  of  whatever  rules 
us  that  it  works  blunderingly,  seeing  that  the  good 
things  given  to  a  man  are  not  given  at  the  precise  mo- 
nent  when  they  would  have  filled  him  with  delight. 
But,  whether  this  be  true  or  false,  we  can  choose  the 
just  turn  of  the  seasons  in  everything  we  do  of  our 
own  will,  and  especially  in  the  making  of  hay.  Many 
think  that  hay  is  best  made  when  the  grass  is  thickest ; 
and  so  they  delay  until  it  is  rank  and  in  flower,  and 
has  already  heavily  pulled  the  ground.  And  there  is 
another  false  reason  for  delay,  which  is  wet  weather. 
For  very  few  will  understand  (though  it  comes  year 
after  year)  that  we  have  rain  always  in  South  Eng- 
land between  the  sickle  and  the  scythe,  or  say  just  after 
the  weeks  of  east  wind  are  over.  First  we  have  a 
week  of  sudden  warmth,  as  though  the  south  had  come 
to  see  us  all;  then  we  have  the  weeks  of  east  and  south- 
east wind ;  and  then  we  have  more  or  less  of  that  rain 
of  which  I  spoke,  and  which  always  astonishes  the 
world.  Now  it  is  just  before,  or  during,  or  at  the 
very  end  of  that  rain — but  not  later — that  grass  should 
be  cut  for  hay.    True,  upland  grass,  which  is  always 


The  Mowing  of  a  Field  117 

thin,  should  be  cut  earlier  than  the  grass  in  the  bot- 
toms and  along  the  water  meadows;  but  not  even  the 
latest,  even  in  the  wettest  seasons,  should  be  left  (as 
it  is)  to  flower  and  even  to  seed.  For  what  we  get 
when  we  store  our  grass  is  not  a  harvest  of  something 
ripe,  but  a  thing  just  caught  in  its  prime  before  ma- 
turity: as  witness  that  our  corn  and  straw  are  best 
yellow,  but  our  hay  is  best  green.  So  also  Death 
should  be  represented  with  a  scythe  and  Time  with  a 
sickle ;  for  Time  can  take  only  what  is  ripe,  but  Death 
comes  always  too  soon.  In  a  word,  then,  it  is  always 
much  easier  to  cut  grass  too  late  than  too  early;  and 
I,  under  that  evening  and  come  back  to  these  pleasant 
fields,  looked  at  the  grass  and  knew  that  it  was  time. 
June  was  in  full  advance ;  it  was  the  beginning  of  that 
season  when  the  night  has  already  lost  her  foothold  of 
the  earth  and  hovers  over  it,  never  quite  descending, 
but  mixing  sunset  with  the  dawn. 

Next  morning,  before  it  was  yet  broad  day,  I  awoke, 
and  thought  of  the  mowing.  The  birds  were  already 
chattering  in  the  trees  beside  my  window,  all  except 
the  nightingale,  which  had  left  and  flown  away  to  the 
Weald,  where  he  sings  all  summer  by  day  as  well  as 
by  night  in  the  oaks  and  the  hazel  spinneys,  and  espe- 
cially along  the  little  river  Adur,  one  of  the  rivers  of 
the  Weald.  The  birds  and  the  thought  of  the  mowing 
had  awakened  me,  and  I  went  down  the  stairs  and 


Il8  Hilaire  Belloc 

along  the  stone  floors  to  where  I  could  find  a  scythe; 
and  when  I  took  it  from  its  nail,  I  remembered  how, 
fourteen  years  ago,  I  had  last  gone  out  with  my  scythe, 
just  so,  into  the  fields  at  morning.  In  between  that 
day  and  this  were  many  things,  cities  and  armies,  and 
a  confusion  of  books,  mountains  and  the  desert,  and 
horrible  great  breadths  of  sea. 

When  I  got  out  into  the  long  grass  the  sun  was  not 
yet  risen,  but  there  were  already  many  colors  in  the 
eastern  sky,  and  I  made  haste  to  sharpen  my  scythe, 
so  that  I  might  get  to  the  cutting  before  the  dew  should 
dry.  Some  say  that  it  is  best  to  wait  till  all  the  dew 
has  risen,  so  as  to  get  the  grass  quite  dry  from  the  very 
first.  But,  though  it  is  an  advantage  to  get  the  grass 
quite  dry,  yet  it  is  not  worth  while  to  wait  till  the  dew 
has  risen.  For,  in  the  first  place,  you  lose  many  hours 
of  work  (and  those  the  coolest),  and  next — which  is 
more  important — you  lose  that  great  ease  and  thickness 
in  cutting  which  comes  of  the  dew.  So  I  at  once  began 
to  sharpen  my  scythe. 

There  is  an  art  also  in  the  sharpening  of  the  scythe, 
and  it  is  worth  describing  carefully.  Your  blade  must 
be  dry,  and  that  is  why  you  will  see  men  rubbing  the 
scythe-blade  with  grass  before  they  whet  it.  Then 
also  your  rubber  must  be  quite  dry,  and  on  this  account 
it  is  a  good  thing  to  lay  it  on  your  coat  and  keep  it 
there  during  all  your  day's  mowing.    The  scythe  you 


The  Mowing  of  a  Field  II9 

stand  upright,  with  the  blade  pointing  away  from  you, 
and  put  your  left  hand  firmly  on  the  back  of  the  blade, 
grasping  it:  then  you  pass  the  rubber  first  down  one 
side  of  the  blade-edge  and  then  down  the  other,  begin- 
ning near  the  handle  and  going  on  to  the  point  and 
working  quickly  and  hard.  When  you  first  do  this  you 
will,  perhaps,  cut  your  hand;  but  it  is  only  at  first 
that  such  an  accident  will  happen  to  you. 

To  tell  when  the  scythe  is  sharp  enough  this  is  the 
rule.  First  the  stone  clangs  and  grinds  against  the 
iron  harshly ;  then  it  rings  musically  to  one  note ;  then, 
at  last,  it  purrs  as  though  the  iron  and  stone  were  ex- 
actly suited.  When  you  hear  this,  your  scythe  is 
sharp  enough ;  and  I,  when  I  heard  it  that  June  dawn, 
with  everything  quite  silent  except  the  birds,  let  down 
the  scythe  and  bent  myself  to  mow. 

When  one  does  anything  anew,  after  so  many  years, 
one  fears  very  much  for  one's  trick  or  habit.  But  all 
things  once  learnt  are  easily  recoverable,  and  I  very 
soon  recovered  the  swing  and  power  of  the  mower. 
Mowing  A^  ell  and  mowing  badly — or  rather  not  mow- 
ing at  all — are  separated  by  very  little ;  as  is  also  true 
of  writing  verse,  of  playing  the  fiddle,  and  of  dozens 
of  other  things,  but  of  nothing  more  than  of  believing. 
For  the  bad  or  young  or  untaught  mower  withouf 
tradition,  the  mower  Promethean,  the  mower  original 
and  contemptuous  of  the  past,  does  all  these  things: 


I20  Hi  I  aire  Belloc 

He  leaves  great  crescents  of  grass  uncut.  He  digs  the 
point  of  the  scythe  hard  into  the  ground  with  a  jerk. 
He  loosens  the  handles  and  even  the  fastening  of  the 
blade.  He  twists  the  blade  with  his  blunders,  he  blunts 
the  blade,  he  chips  it,  dulls  it,  or  breaks  it  clean  off  at 
the  tip.  If  any  one  is  standing  by  he  cuts  him  in  the 
ankle.  He  sweeps  up  into  the  air  wildly,  with  nothing 
to  resist  his  stroke.  He  drags  up  earth  with  the  grass, 
which  is  like  making  the  meadow  bleed.  But  the 
good  mower  who  does  things  just  as  they  should  be 
done  and  have  been  for  a  hundred  thousand  years,  falls 
into  none  of  these  fooleries.  He  goes  forward  very 
steadily,  his  scythe-blade  just  barely  missing  the 
ground,  every  grass  falling;  the  swish  and  rhythm  of 
his  mowing  are  always  the  same. 

So  great  an  art  can  only  be  learnt  by  continual  prac- 
tice; but  this  much  is  worth  writing  down,  that,  as  in 
all  good  work,  to  know  the  thing  with  which  you  work 
is  the  core  of  the  affair.  Good  verse  is  best  written  on 
good  paper  with  an  easy  pen,  not  with  a  lump  of  coal 
on  a  whitewashed  wall.  The  pen  thinks  for  you;  and 
so  does  the  scythe  mow  for  you  if  you  treat  it  honorably 
and  in  a  manner  that  makes  it  recognize  its  service. 
The  manner  is  this.  You  must  regard  the  scythe  as  a 
pendulum  that  swings,  not  as  a  knife  that  cuts.  A 
good  mower  puts  no  more  strength  into  his  stroke  than 
into  his  lifting.    Again,  stand  up  to  your  work.    The 


The  Mowing  of  a  Field  121 

bad  mower,  eager  and  full  of  pain,  leans  forward  and 
tries  to  force  the  scythe  through  the  grass.  The  good 
mower,  serene  and  able,  stands  as  nearly  straight  as 
the  shape  of  the  scythe  will  let  him,  and  follows  up 
every  stroke  closely,  moving  his  left  foot  forward. 
Then  also  let  every  stroke  get  well  away.  Mowing  is 
a  thing  of  ample  gestures,  like  drawing  a  cartoon. 
Then,  again,  get  yourself  into  a  mechanical  and  repeti- 
tive mood :  be  thinking  of  anything  at  all  but  your 
mowing,  and  be  anxious  only  when  there  seems  some 
interruption  to  the  monotony  of  the  sound.  In  this 
mowing  should  be  like  one's  prayers — all  of  a  sort  and 
always  the  same,  and  so  made  that  you  can  establish 
a  monotony  and  work  them,  as  it  were,  with  half  your 
mind :  that  happier  half,  the  half  that  does  not  bother. 
In  this  way,  when  I  had  recovered  the  art  after  so 
many  years,  I  went  forward  over  the  field,  cutting  lane 
after  lane  through  the  grass,  and  bringing  out  its  most 
secret  essences  with  the  sweep  of  the  scythe  until  the 
air  was  full  of  odors.  At  the  end  of  every  lane  I 
sharpened  my  scythe  and  looked  back  at  the  work  done, 
and  then  carried  my  scythe  down  again  upon  my 
shoulder  to  begin  another.  So,  long  before  the  bell 
rang  in  the  chapel  above  me — that  is,  long  before  six 
o'clock,  which  is  the  time  for  the  Angelus — I  had  many 
swathes  already  lying  in  order  parallel  like  soldiery; 
and  the  high  grass  yet  standing,  making  a  great  con- 


122  Hilaire  Be  Hoc 

trast  with  the  shaven  part,  looked  dense  and  high.    As 
it  says  in  the  Ballad  of  Val-es-Dunes,  where — 
The  tall  son  of  the  Seven  Winds 
Came  riding  out  of  Hither-hythe, 
and  his  horse-hoofs   (you  will  remember)    trampled 
into  the  press  and  made  a  gap  in  it,  and  his  sword  (as 
you  know) 

was  like  a  scythe 
In  Arcus  when  the  grass  is  high 
And  all  the  swathes  in  order  lie, 
And  there's  the  bailiff  standing  by 
A-gathering  of  the  tithe. 
So  I  mowed  all  that  morning,  till  the  houses  awoke 
in  the  valley,  and  from  some  of  them  rose  a  little 
fragrant  smoke,  and  men  began  to  be  seen. 

I  stood  still  and  rested  on  my  scythe  to  watch  the 
awakening  of  the  village,  when  I  saw  coming  up  to 
my  field  a  man  whom  I  had  known  in  older  times, 
before  I  had  left  the  Valley. 

He  was  of  that  dark  silent  race  upon  which  all  the 
learned  quarrel,  but  which,  by  whatever  meaningless 
name  it  may  be  called — Iberian,  or  Celtic,  or  what  you 
will — is  the  permanent  root  of  all  England,  and  makes 
England  wealthy  and  preserves  it  everywhere,  except 
perhaps  in  the  Fens  and  in  a  part  of  Yorkshire.  Every- 
where else  you  will  find  it  active  and  strong.  These 
people  are  intensive;  their  thoughts  and  their  labors 


The  Mowing  of  a  Field  123 

turn  inward.  It  is  on  account  of  their  presence  in 
these  islands  that  oup  gardens  are  the  richest  in  the 
world.  They  also  love  low  rooms  and  ample  fires  and 
great  warm  slopes  of  thatch.  They  have,  as  I  be- 
lieve, an  older  acquaintance  with  the  English  air  than 
any  other  of  all  the  strains  that  make  up  England. 
They  hunted  in  the  Weald  with  stones,  and  camped  in 
the  pines  of  the  green-sand.  They  lurked  under  the 
oaks  of  the  upper  rivers,  and  saw  the  legionaries  go  up, 
up  the  straight  paved  road  from  the  sea.  They  helped 
the  few  pirates  to  destroy  the  towns,  and  mixed  with 
those  pirates  and  shared  the  spoils  of  the  Roman  villas, 
and  were  glad  to  see  the  captains  and  the  priests  de- 
stroyed. They  remain;  and  no  admixture  of  the 
Frisian  pirates,  or  the  Breton,  or  the  Angevin  and 
Norman  conquerors,  has  very  much  affected  their 
cunning  eyes. 

To  this  race,  I  say,  belonged  the  man  who  now  ap- 
proached me.  And  he  said  to  me,  "Mowing?'*  And  I 
answered,  "Ar."  Then  he  also  said  "Ar,"  as  in  duty 
bound;  for  so  we  speak  to  each  other  in  the  Stenes  of 
the  Downs. 

Next  he  told  me  that,  as  he  had  nothing  to  do,  he 
would  lend  me  a  hand ;  and  I  thanked  him  warmly,  or, 
as  we  say,  "kindly."  For  it  is  a  good  custom  of  ours 
always  to  treat  bargaining  as  though  it  were  a  cour- 
teous pastime;  and  though  what  he  was  after  was 


124  Hi  I  aire  Belloc 

money,  and  what  I  wanted  was  his  labor  at  the  least 
pay,  yet  we  both  played  the  comedy  that  w^e  were  free 
men,  the  one  granting  a  grace  and  the  other  accepting 
it.  For  the  dry  bones  of  commerce,  avarice  and  method 
and  need,  are  odious  to  the  Valley;  and  we  cover  them 
up  with  a  pretty  body  of  fiction  and  observances.  Thus, 
when  it  comes  to  buying  pigs,  the  buyer  does  not  begin 
to  decry  the  pig  and  the  vendor  to  praise  it,  as  is  the 
custom  with  lesser  men;  but  tradition  makes  them  do 
business  in  this  fashion: — 

First  the  buyer  will  go  up  to  the  seller  when  he  sees 
him  in  his  own  steading,  and,  looking  at  the  pig  with 
admiration,  the  buyer  will  say  that  rain  may  or  may 
not  fall,  or  that  we  shall  have  snow  or  thunder,  accord- 
ing to  the  time  of  the  year.  Then  the  seller,  looking 
critically  at  the  pig,  will  agree  that  the  weather  is  as 
his  friend  maintains.  There  is  no  haste  at  all;  great 
leisure  marks  the  dignity  of  their  exchange.  And  the 
next  step  is,  that  the  buyer  says:    "That's  a  fine  pig 

you  have  there,  Mr. "  (giving  the  seller's  name). 

"Ar,  powerful  fine  pig."  Then  the  seller,  saying  also 
"Mr."  (for  twin  brothers  rocked  in  one  cradle  give 
each  other  ceremonious  observance  here),  the  seller,  I 
say,  admits,  as  though  with  reluctance,  the  strength 
and  beauty  of  the  pig,  and  falls  into  deep  thought. 
Then  the  buyer  says,  as  though  moved  by  a  great 
desire,  that  he  is  ready  to  give  so  much  for  the  pig, 


The  Mowing  of  a  Field  125 

naming  half  the  proper  price,  or  a  little  less.  Then  the 
seller  remains  in  silence  for  some  moments;  and  at 
last  begins  to  shake  his  head  slowly,  till  he  says:  "I 
don't  be  thinking  of  selling  the  pig,  anyways."  He 
will  also  add  that  a  party  only  Wednesday  offered  him 
so  much  for  the  pig — and  he  names  about  double  the 
proper  price.  Thus  all  ritual  is  duly  accomplished; 
and  the  solemn  act  is  entered  upon  with  reverence  and 
in  a  spirit  of  truth.  For  when  the  buyer  uses  this 
phrase:  "1*11  tell  you  what  I  will  do,"  and  offers 
within  half  a  crown  of  the  pig's  value,  the  seller  replies 
that  he  can  refuse  him  nothing,  and  names  half  a 
crown  above  its  value;  the  difference  is  split,  the  pig 
IS  sold,  and  in  the  quiet  soul  of  each  runs  the  peace 
of  something  accomplished. 

Thus  do  we  buy  a  pig  or  land  or  labor  or  malt  or 
lime,  always  with  elaboration  and  set  forms;  and 
many  a  London  man  has  paid  double  and  more  for 
his  violence  and  his  greedy  haste  and  very  unchivalrous 
higgling.  As  happened  with  the  land  at  Underwal- 
tham,  which  the  mortgagees  had  begged  and  implored 
the  estate  to  take  at  twelve  hundred  and  had  privately 
offered  to  all  the  world  at  a  thousand,  but  which  a 
sharp  direct  man,  of  the  kind  that  makes  great  for- 
tunes, a  man  in  a  motor-car,  a  man  in  a  fur  coat,  a 
man  of  few  words,  bought  for  two  thousand  three 
hundred  before  my  very  eyes,  protesting  that  they 


126  Hilaire  Belloc 

might  take  his  offer  or  leave  it ;  and  all  because  he  did 
not  begin  by  praising  the  land. 

Well  then,  this  man  I  spoke  of  offered  to  help  me, 
and  he  went  to  get  his  scythe.  But  I  went  into  this 
house  and  brought  out  a  gallon  jar  of  small  ale  for 
him  and  for  me ;  for  the  sun  was  now  very  warm,  and 
small  ale  goes  well  with  mowing.  When  we  had  drunk 
some  of  this  ale  in  mugs  called  "I  see  you,*'  we  took 
each  a  swathe,  he  a  little  behind  me  because  he  was 
the  better  mower;  and  so  for  many  hours  we  swung, 
one  before  the  other,  mowing  and  mowing  at  the  tall 
grass  of  the  field.  And  the  sun  rose  to  noon  and  we 
were  still  at  our  mowing;  and  we  ate  food,  but  only 
for  a  little  while,  and  we  took  again  to  our  mowing. 
And  at  last  there  was  nothing  left  but  a  small  square  of 
grass,  standing  like  a  square  of  linesmen  who  keep 
their  formation,  tall  and  unbroken,  with  all  the  dead 
lying  around  them  when  the  battle  is  over  and  done. 

Then  for  some  little  time  I  rested  after  all  those 
hours;  and  the  man  and  I  talked  together,  and  a  long 
way  off  we  heard  in  another  field  the  musical  sharpen- 
ing of  a  scythe. 

The  sunlight  slanted  powdered  and  mellow  over  the 
breadth  of  the  valley;  for  day  was  nearing  its  end. 
I  went  to  fetch  rakes  from  the  steading;  and  when  I 
had  come  back  the  last  of  the  grass  had  fallen,  and 
all  the  field  lay  flat  and  smooth,  with  the  very  green 


The  Mowing  of  a  Field  127 

short  grass  in  lanes  between  the  dead  and  yellow 
swathes. 

These  swathes  we  raked  into  cocks  to  keep  them 
from  the  dew  against  our  return  at  daybreak;  and  we 
made  the  cocks  as  tall  and  steep  as  we  could,  for  in 
that  shape  they  best  keep  off  the  dew,  and  it  is  easier 
also  to  spread  them  after  the  sun  has  risen.  Then  we 
raked  up  every  straggling  blade,  till  the  whole  field 
was  a  clean  floor  for  the  tedding  and  the  carrying  of 
the  hay  next  morning.  The  grass  we  had  mown  was 
but  a  little  over  two  acres;  for  that  is  all  the  pasture 
on  my  little  tiny  farm. 

When  we  had  done  all  this,  there  fell  upon  us  the 
beneficent  and  deliberate  evening;  so  that  as  we  sat  a 
little  while  together  near  the  rakes,  w^e  saw  the  valley 
more  solemn  and  dim  around  us,  and  all  the  trees  and 
hedgerows  quite  still,  and  held  by  a  complete  silence. 
Then  I  paid  my  companion  his  wage,  and  bade  him  a 
good  night,  till  we  should  meet  in  the  same  place 
before  sunrise. 

He  went  off  with  a  slow  and  steady  progress,  as  all 
our  peasants  do,  making  their  w^alking  a  part  of  the 
easy  but  continual  labor  of  their  lives.  But  I  sat  on, 
watching  the  light  creep  around  towards  the  north  and 
change,  and  the  waning  moon  coming  up  as  though  by 
stealth  behind  the  woods  of  No  Man's  Land. 


THE  STUDENT  LIFE 
By  William  Osler 

Sir  William  Osier,  one  of  the  best-loved  and  most  influential 
teachers  of  his  time,  was  born  in  Canada  in  1849.  He  began 
his  education  in  Toronto  and  at  McGill  University,  Montreal, 
where  he  served  as  professor  of  medicine,  1874-84.  Wherever 
he  worked  his  gifted  and  unique  personality  was  a  center  of 
inspiration — at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  1884-89;  at  Johns 
Hopkins,  1889-1904.  In  1904  he  went  to  Oxford  as  Regius  Pro- 
fessor of  Medicine;  he  died  in  England  in  1919. 

Only  our  medical  friends  have  a  right  to  speak  of  the  great 
doctor's  place  in  their  own  world ;  but  one  would  like  to  see  his 
honorable  place  as  a  man  of  letters  more  generally  understood. 
His  generous  wisdom  and  infectious  enthusiasm  are  delightfully 
expressed  in  his  collected  writings.  No  lover  of  the  essay  can 
afford  to  overlook  ^quaniniitas  and  Other  Addresses,  An  Ala- 
bama Student  and  Other  Biographical  Essays,  Science  and  Im- 
mortality and  Counsels  and  Ideals,  this  last  an  anthology  col- 
lected from  his  professional  papers  by  one  of  his  pupils.  He 
stands  in  the  honorable  line  of  those  great  masters  who  have 
found  their  highest  usefulness  as  kindly  counselors  of  the  young. 
His  lucid  and  exquisite  prose,  with  its  extraordinary  wealth  of 
quotation  from  the  literature  of  all  ages,  and  his  unfailing  humor 
and  tenderness,  put  him  in  the  first  rank  of  didactic  essayists. 
One  could  get  a  liberal  education  in  literature  merely  by  follow- 
ing up  all  his  quotations  and  references.  He  was  more  deeply 
versed  in  the  classics  than  many  professors  of  Greek  and  Latin ; 
the  whole  music  of  English  poetry  seemed  to  be  current  in  his 
blood.  His  essay  on  Keats,  taken  with  Kipling's  wonderful 
story  Via  Wireless,  tells  the  student  more  about  that  poet  than 
many  a  volume  of  biography.  When  was  biography  more  delight- 
fully written  than  in  his  volume  An  Alabama  Student? 

Walt  Whitman  said,  when  Dr.  Osier  attended  him  years  ago, 
"Osier  believes  in  the  gospel  of  encouragement — of  putting  the 
best  construction  on  things — the  best  foot  forward.  He's  a  fine 
fellow  and  a  wise  one,  I  guess."  The  great  doctor's  gospel 
of  encouragement  is  indeed  a  happy  companion  for  the  midnight 
reader.  Rich  in  every  gentle  quality  that  makes  life  endeared, 
his  books  are  the  most  sagacious  and  helpful  of  modern  writings 
for  the  young  student.  As  one  who  h^  found  them  an  unfail- 
ing delight,  I  venture  to  hope  that  our  medical  confreres  may 
not  be  the  only  readers  to  enjoy  their  vivacity  and  charm. 

128 


The  Student  Life  129 

Except  it  be  a  lover,  no  one  is  more  interesting  as 
an  object  of  study  than  a  student.  Shakespeare  might 
have  made  him  a  fourth  in  his  immortal  group.  The 
lunatic  with  his  fixed  idea,  the  poet  with  his  fine 
frenzy,  the  lover  with  his  frantic  idolatry,  and  the 
student  aflame  with  the  desire  for  knowledge  are  of 
"imagination  all  compact."  To  an  absorbing  passion, 
a  whole-souled  devotion,  must  be  joined  an  enduring 
energy,  if  the  student  is  to  become  a  devotee  of  the 
gray-eyed  goddess  to  whose  law  his  services  are  bound. 
Like  the  quest  of  the  Holy  Grail,  the  quest  of  Minerva 
is  not  for  all.  For  the  one,  the  pure  life ;  for  the  other, 
what  Milton  calls  "a  strong  propensity  of  nature." 
Here  again  the  student  often  resembles  the  poet — he  is 
born,  not  made.  While  the  resultant  of  two  molding 
forces,  the  accidental,  external  conditions,  and  the 
hidden  germinal  energies,  which  produce  in  each  one 
of  us  national,  family,  and  individual  traits,  the  true 
student  possesses  in  some  measure  a  divine  spark  which 
sets  at  naught  their  laws.  Like  the  Snark,  he  defies 
definition,  but  there  are  three  unmistakable  signs  by 
which  you  may  recognize  the  genuine  article  from  a 
Boojum — an  absorbing  desire  to  know  the  truth,  an 
unswerving  steadfastness  in  its  pursuit,  and  an  open, 
honest  heart,  free  from  suspicion,  guile,  and  jealousy. 

At  the  outset  do  not  be  worried  about  this  big  ques- 
tion— Truth.    It  is  a  very  simple  matter  if  each  one  of 


130  William  Osier 

you  starts  with  the  desire  to  get  as  much  as  possible. 
No  human  being  is  constituted  to  know  the  truth,  the 
whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth;  and  even  the 
best  of  men  must  be  content  with  fragments,  with 
partial  glimpses,  never  the  full  fruition.  In  this  un- 
satisfied quest  the  attitude  of  mind,  the  desire,  the 
thirst — a  thirst  that  from  the  soul  must  rise! — the 
fervent  longing,  are  the  be-all  and  the  end-all.  What 
is  the  student  but  a  lover  courting  a  fickle  mistress  who 
ever  eludes  his  grasp?  In  this  very  elusiveness  is 
brought  out  his  second  great  characteristic — steadfast- 
ness of  purpose.  Unless  from  the  start  the  limitations 
incident  to  our  frail  human  faculties  are  frankly  ac- 
cepted, nothing  but  disappointment  awaits  you.  The 
truth  is  the  best  you  can  get  with  your  best  endeavor, 
the  best  that  the  best  men  accept — with  this  you  must 
learn  to  be  satisfied,  retaining  at  the  same  time  with 
due  humility  an  earnest  desire  for  an  ever  larger  por- 
tion. Only  by  keeping  the  mind  plastic  and  receptive 
does  the  student  escape  perdition.  It  is  not,  as  Charles 
Lamb  remarks,  that  some  people  do  not  know  what  to 
do  with  truth  when  it  is  offered  to  them,  but  the  tragic 
fate  is  to  reach,  after  years  of  patient  search,  a  condi- 
tion of  mind-blindness  in  which  the  truth  is  not  recog- 
nized, though  it  stares  you  in  the  face.  This  can  never 
happen  to  a  man  who  has  followed  step  by  step  the 
ffrowth  of  a  truth,  and  who  knows  the  painful  phases 


The  Student  Life  131 

of  its  evolution.  It  is  one  of  the  great  tragedies  of 
life  that  every  truth  has  to  struggle  to  acceptance 
against  honest  but  mind-blind  students.  Harvey  knew 
his  contemporaries  well,  and  for  twelve  successive 
years  demonstrated  the  circulation  of  the  blood  before 
daring  to  publish  the  facts  on  which  the  truth  was 
based.* 

Only  steadfastness  of  purpose  and  humility  enable 
the  student  to  shift  his  position  to  meet  the  new  condi- 
tions in  which  new  truths  are  born,  or  old  ones  modi- 
fied beyond  recognition.  And,  thirdly,  the  honest  heart 
will  keep  him  in  touch  with  his  fellow  students,  and 
furnish  that  sense  of  comradeship  without  which  he 
travels  an  arid  waste  alone.  I  say  advisedly  an  honest 
heart — the  honest  head  is  prone  to  be  cold  and  stern, 
given  to  judgment,  not  mercy,  and  not  always  able  to 
entertain  that  true  charity  which,  while  it  thinketh  no 
evil,  is  anxious  to  put  the  best  possible  interpretation 
upon  the  motives  of  a  fellow  worker.  It  will  foster, 
too,  an  attitude  of  generous,  friendly  rivalry  untinged 
by  the  green  peril,  jealousy,  that  is  the  best  preventive 
of  the  growth  of  a  bastard  scientific  spirit,  loving 
seclusion  and  working  in  a  lock-and-key  laboratory,  as 
timorous  of  light  as  is  a  thief. 

*  "These  views,  as  usual,  pleased  some  more,  others  less ;  some 
chid  and  calumniated  me,  and  laid  it  to  me  as  a  crime  that  I  had 
dared  to  depart  from  the  precepts  and  opinions  of  all  Anato- 
mists.'*— De  Motu  Cordis,  chap.  i. 


132  William  Osier 

You  have  all  become  brothers  in  a  great  society,  not 
apprentices,  since  that  implies  a  master,  and  nothing 
should  be  further  from  the  attitude  of  the  teacher  than 
much  that  is  meant  in  that  word,  used  though  it  be 
in  another  sense,  particularly  by  our  French  brethren 
in  a  most  delightful  way,  signifying  a  bond  of  intel- 
lectual filiation.  A  fraternal  attitude  is  not  easy  to 
cultivate — the  chasm  between  the  chair  and  the  bench 
is  difficult  to  bridge.  Two  things  have  helped  to  put 
up  a  cantilever  across  the  gulf.  The  successful  teacher 
is  no  longer  on  a  height,  pumping  knowledge  at  high 
pressure  into  passive  receptacles.  The  new  methods 
have  changed  all  this.  He  is  no  longer  Sir  Oracle, 
perhaps  unconsciously  by  his  very  manner  antagoniz- 
ing minds  to  whose  level  he  cannot  possibly  descend, 
but  he  is  a  senior  student  anxious  to  help  his  juniors. 
When  a  simple,  earnest  spirit  animates  a  college,  there 
is  no  appreciable  interval  between  the  teacher  and  the 
taught — both  are  in  the  same  class,  the  one  a  little 
more  advanced  than  the  other.  So  animated,  the 
student  feels  that  he  has  joined  a  family  whose  honor 
IS  his  honor,  whose  welfare  is  his  own,  and  whose 
interests  should  be  his  first  consideration. 

The  hardest  conviction  to  get  into  the  mind  of  a 
beginner  is  that  the  education  upon  which  he  is  en- 
gaged is  not  a  college  course,  not  a  medical  course, 
but  a  life  course,  for  which  the  work  of  a  few  years 


The  Student  Life  133 

under  teachers  is  but  a  preparation.  Whether  you  will 
falter  and  fail  in  the  race  or  whether  you  will  be  faith- 
ful to  the  end  depends  on  the  training  before  the  start, 
and  on  your  staying  powers,  points  upon  which  I  need 
not  enlarge.  You  can  all  become  good  students,  a  few 
may  become  great  students,  and  now  and  again  one  of 
you  will  be  found  who  does  easily  and  well  what  others 
cannot  do  at  all,  or  very  badly,  which  is  John  Ferriar*s 
excellent  definition  of  a  genius. 

In  the  hurry  and  bustle  of  a  business  world,  which 
is  the  life  of  this  continent,  it  is  not  easy  to  train  first- 
class  students.  Under  present  conditions  it  is  hard  to 
get  the  needful  seclusion,  on  which  account  it  is  that 
our  educational  market  is  so  full  of  wayside  fruit.  I 
have  always  been  much  impressed  by  the  advice  of 
St.  Chrysostom:  "Depart  from  the  highway  and 
transplant  thyself  in  some  enclosed  ground,  for  it  is 
hard  for  a  tree  which  stands  by  the  wayside  to  keep 
her  fruit  till  it  be  ripe."  The  dilettante  is  abroad  in 
the  land,  the  man  who  is  always  venturing  on  tasks  for 
which  he  is  imperfectly  equipped,  a  habit  of  mind 
fostered  by  the  multiplicity  of  subjects  in  the  curricu- 
lum: and  while  many  things  are  studied,  few  are 
studied  thoroughly.  Men  will  not  take  time  to  get  to 
the  heart  of  a  matter.  After  all,  concentration  is  the 
price  the  modern  student  pays  for  success.  Thorough- 
ness is  the  most  difficult  habit  to  acquire,  but  it  is  the 


134  William  Osier 

pearl  of  great  price,  worth  all  the  worry  and  trouble 
of  the  search.  The  dilettante  lives  an  easy,  butterfly 
life,  knowing  nothing  of  the  toil  and  labor  with  which 
the  treasures  of  knowledge  are  dug  out  of  the  past,  or 
wrung  by  patient  research  in  the  laboratories.  Take, 
for  example,  the  early  history  of  this  country — how 
easy  for  the  student  of  the  one  type  to  get  a  smatter- 
ing, even  a  fairly  full  acquaintance  with  the  events  of 
the  French  and  Spanish  settlements.  Put  an  original 
document  before  him,  and  it  might  as  well  be  Arabic. 
What  we  need  is  the  other  type,  the  man  who  knows 
the  records,  who,  with  a  broad  outlook  and  drilled  in 
what  may  be  called  the  embryology  of  history,  has  yet 
a  powerful  vision  for  the  minutiae  of  life.  It  is  these 
kitchen  and  backstair  men  who  are  to  be  encouraged, 
the  men  who  know  the  subject  in  hand  in  all  possible 
relationships.  Concentration  has  its  drawbacks.  It  is 
possible  to  become  so  absorbed  in  the  problem  of  the 
^'enclitic  (Jf,"  or  the  structure  of  the  flagella  of  the 
Trichomonas,  or  of  the  toes  of  the  prehistoric  horse, 
that  the  student  loses  the  sense  of  proportion  in  his 
work,  and  even  wastes  a  lifetime  in  researches  which 
are  valueless  because  not  in  touch  with  current  knowl- 
edge. You  remember  poor  Casaubon,  in  "Middle- 
march,"  whose  painful  scholarship  was  lost  on  this  ac- 
count. The  best  preventive  to  this  is  to  get  denational- 
ized early.   The  true  student  is  a  citizen  of  the  world, 


The  Student  Life  135 

the  allegiance  of  whose  soul,  at  any  rate,  is  too  pre- 
cious to  be  restricted  to  a  single  country.  The  great 
minds,  the  great  works  transcend  all  limitations  of 
time,  of  language,  and  of  race,  and  the  scholar  can 
never  feel  initiated  into  the  company  of  the  elect  until 
he  can  approach  all  of  life's  problems  from  the  cosmo- 
politan standpoint.  I  care  not  in  what  subject  he  may 
work,  the  full  knowledge  cannot  be  reached  without 
drawing  on  supplies  from  lands  other  than  his  own — 
French,  English,  German,  American,  Japanese,  Rus- 
sian, Italian — there  must  be  no  discrimination  by  the 
loyal  student  who  should  willingly  draw  from  any  and 
every  source  with  an  open  mind  and  a  stern  resolve  to 
render  unto  all  their  dues.  I  care  not  on  what  stream  of 
knowledge  he  may  embark,  follow  up  its  course,  and 
the  rivulets  that  feed  it  flow  from  many  lands.  If  the 
work  is  to  be  effective  he  must  keep  in  touch  with 
scholars  in  other  countries.  How  often  has  it  hap- 
pened that  years  of  precious  time  have  been  given  to  a 
problem  already  solved  or  shown  to  be  insoluble,  be- 
cause of  the  ignorance  of  w^hat  had  been  done  else- 
where. And  it  is  not  only  book  knowledge  and  jour- 
nal knowledge,  but  a  knowledge  of  men  that  is  needed^ 
The  student  will,  if  possible,  see  the  men  in  other  lands. 
Travel  not  only  widens  the  vision  and  gives  certainties 
in  place  of  vague  surmises,  but  the  personal  contact 
with  foreign  workers  enables  him  to  appreciate  better 


136  William  Osier 

the  failings  or  successes  in  his  own  Hne  of  work,  per- 
haps to  look  with  more  charitable  eyes  on  the  work  of 
some  brother  whose  limitations  and  opportunities  have 
been  more  restricted  than  his  own.  Or,  in  contact  with 
a  mastermind,  he  may  take  fire,  and  the  glow  of  the 
enthusiasm  may  be  the  inspiration  of  his  life.  Concen- 
tration must  then  be  associated  with  large  views  on  the 
relation  of  the  problem,  and  a  knowledge  of  its  status 
elsewhere;  otherwise  it  may  land  him  in  the  slough  of 
a  specialism  so  narrow  that  it  has  depth  and  no  breadth, 
or  he  may  be  led  to  make  what  he  believes  to  be  impor- 
tant discoveries,  but  which  have  long  been  current  coin 
in  other  lands.  It  is  sad  to  think  that  the  day  of  the 
great  polymathic  student  is  at  an  end;  that  we  may, 
perhaps,  never  again  see  a  Scaliger,  a  Haller,  or  a 
Humboldt — men  who  took  the  whole  field  of  knowl- 
edge for  their  domain  and  viewed  it  as  from  a  pinnacle. 
And  yet  a  great  specializing  generaHst  may  arise,  who 
can  tell?  Some  twentieth-century  Aristotle  may  be 
now  tugging  at  his  bottle,  as  little  dreaming  as  are  his 
parents  or  his  friends  of  a  conquest  of  the  mind,  beside 
which  the  wonderful  victories  of  the  Stagirite  will  look 
pale.  The  value  of  a  really  great  student  to  the  country 
is  equal  to  half  a  dozen  grain  elevators  or  a  new  trans- 
continental railway.  He  is  a  commodity  singularly 
fickle  and  variable,  and  not  to  be  grown  to  order.  So 
far  as  his  advent  is  concerned  there  is  no  telling  when 


The  Student  Life  137 

or  where  he  may  arise.  The  conditions  seem  to  be 
present  even  under  the  most  unHkely  externals.  Some 
of  the  greatest  students  this  country  has  produced  have 
come  from  small  villages  and  country  places.  It  is 
impossible  to  predict  from  a  study  of  the  environ- 
ment, v^hich  a  "strong  propensity  of  nature,"  to 
quote  Milton's  phrase  again,  will  easily  bend  or 
break. 

The  student  must  be  allowed  full  freedom  in  his 
work,  undisturbed  by  the  utilitarian  spirit  of  the  Philis- 
tine, who  cries,  Cui  bono?  and  distrusts  pure  science. 
The  present  remarkable  position  in  applied  science  and 
in  industrial  trades  of  all  sorts  has  been  made  possible 
by  men  who  did  pioneer  work  in  chemistry,  in  physics, 
in  biology,  and  in  physiology,  without  a  thought  in  their 
researches  of  any  practical  application.  The  members 
of  this  higher  group  of  productive  students  are  rarely 
understood  by  the  common  spirits,  who  appreciate  as 
little  their  unselfish  devotion  as  their  unworldly  neglect 
of  the  practical  side  of  the  problems. 

Everywhere  now  the  medical  student  is  welcomed  as 
an  honored  member  of  the  guild.  There  was  a  time, 
I  confess,  and  it  is  within  the  memory  of  some  of  us, 
when,  like  Falstaff,  he  was  given  to  "taverns  and  sack 
and  wine  and  metheglins,  and  to  drinkings  and  swear- 
ings and  starings,  pribbles  and  prabbles" ;  but  all  that 
has  changed  with  the  curriculum,  and  the  "Meds"  now 


138  William  Osier 

roar  you  as  gently  as  the  "Theologs."  On  account  of 
the  peculiar  character  of  the  subject-matter  of  your 
studies,  what  I  have  said  upon  the  general  Hfe  and 
mental  attitude  of  the  student  applies  with  tenfold 
force  to  you.  Man,  with  all  his  mental  and  bodily 
anomalies  and  diseases — the  machine  in  order,  the  ma- 
chine in  disorder,  and  the  business  yours  to  put  it  to 
rights.  Through  all  the  phases  of  its  career  this  most 
complicated  mechanism  of  this  wonderful  world  will 
be  the  subject  of  our  study  and  of  your  care — the 
naked,  new-born  infant,  the  artless  child,  the  lad  and 
the  lassie  just  aware  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  over- 
head, the  strong  man  in  the  pride  of  life,  the  woman 
with  the  benediction  of  maternity  on  her  brow,  and  the 
aged,  peaceful  in  the  contemplation  of  the  past.  Almost 
everything  has  been  renewed  in  the  science  and  in  the 
art  of  medicine,  but  all  through  the  long  centuries 
there  has  been  no  variableness  or  shadow  of  change 
in  the  essential  features  of  the  life  which  is  our  con-, 
templation  and  our  care.  The  sick  love-child  of  Israel's 
sweet  singer,  the  plague-stricken  hopes  of  the  great 
Athenian  statesman,  Elpenor,  bereft  of  his  beloved 
Artemidora,  and  "Tully's  daughter  mourned  so 
tenderly,"  are  not  of  any  age  or  any  race — they  are 
here  with  us  to-day,  with  the  Hamlets,  the  Ophelias, 
and  the  Lears.  Amid  an  eternal  heritage  of  sorrow 
and  suffering  our  work  is  laid,  and  this  eternal  note 


The  Student  Life  139 

of  sadness  would  be  insupportable  if  the  daily  tragedies 
were  not  relieved  by  the  spectacle  of  the  heroism  and 
devotion  displayed  by  the  actors.  Nothing  will  sustain 
you  more  potently  than  the  power  to  recognize  in  your 
humdrum  routine,  as  perhaps  it  may  be  thought,  the 
true  poetry  of  life — the  poetry  of  the  commonplace,  of 
the  ordinary  man,  of  the  plain,  toilworn  woman,  with 
their  loves  and  their  joys,  their  sorrows  and  their 
griefs.  The  comedy,  too,  of  life  will  be  spread  before 
you,  and  nobody  laughs  more  often  than  the  doctor  at 
the  pranks  Puck  plays  upon  the  Titanias  and  the  Bot- 
toms among  his  patients.  The  humorous  side  is  really 
almost  as  frequently  turned  towards  him  as  the  tragic. 
Lift  up  one  hand  to  heaven  and  thank  your  stars  if 
they  have  given  you  the  proper  sense  to  enable  you  to 
appreciate  the  inconceivably  droll  situations  in  which 
we  catch  our  fellow  creatures.  Unhappily,  this  is  one 
of  the  free  gifts  of  the  gods,  unevenly  distributed,  not 
bestowed  on  all,  or  on  all  in  equal  portions.  In  undue 
measure  it  is  not  without  risk,  and  in  any  case  in  the 
doctor  it  is  better  appreciated  by  the  eye  than  expressed 
on  the  tongue.  Hilarity  and  good  humor,  a  breezy 
cheerfulness,  a  nature  "sloping  toward  the  southern 
side,"  as  Lowell  has  it,  help  enormously  both  in  the 
study  and  in  the  practice  of  medicine.  To  many  of  a 
somber  and  sour  disposition  it  is  hard  to  maintain  good 
spirits  amid  the  trials  and  tribulations  of  the  day,  and 


140  William  Osier 

yet  it  is  an  unpardonable  mistake  to  go  about  among 
patients  with  a  long  face. 

Divide  your  attentions  equally  between  books  and 
men.  The  strength  of  the  student  of  books  is  to  sit 
still — two  or  three  hours  at  a  stretch — eating  the  heart 
out  of  a  subject  with  pencil  and  notebook  in  hand, 
determined  to  master  the  details  and  intricacies, 
focussing  all  your  energies  on  its  difficulties.  Get  ac- 
customed to  test  all  sorts  of  book  problems  and  state- 
ments for  yourself,  and  take  as  little  as  possible  on 
trust.  The  Hunterian  "Do  not  think,  but  try"  atti- 
tude of  mind  is  the  important  one  to  cultivate.  The 
question  came  up  one  day,  when  discussing  the  grooves 
left  on  the  nails  after  fever,  how  long  it  took  for  the 
nail  to  grow  out,  from  root  to  edge.  A  majority  of 
the  class  had  no  further  interest;  a  few  looked  it  up 
in  books ;  two  men  marked  their  nails  at  the  root  with 
nitrate  of  silver,  and  a  few  months  later  had  positive 
knowledge  on  the  subject.  They  showed  the  proper 
spirit.  The  little  points  that  come  up  in  your  reading 
try  to  test  for  yourselves.  With  one  fundamental 
difficulty  many  of  you  will  have  to  contend  from  the 
outset — a  lack  of  proper  preparation  for  really  hard 
study.  No  one  can  have  watched  successive  groups 
of  young  men  pass  through  the  special  schools  with- 
out profoundly  regretting  the  haphazard,  fragmentary 
character  of  their  preliminary  education.    It  does  seem 


The  Student  Life  141 

too  bad  that  we  cannot  have  a  student  in  his  eighteenth 
year  sufficiently  grounded  in  the  humanities  and  in  the 
sciences  preliminary  to  medicine — but  this  is  an  edu- 
cational problem  upon  which  only  a  Milton  or  a  Locke 
could  discourse  with  profit.  With  pertinacity  you  can 
overcome  the  preliminary  defects  and  once  thoroughly 
interested,  the  work  in  books  becomes  a  pastime.  A 
serious  drawback  in  the  student  life  is  the  self -con- 
sciousness, bred  of  too  close  devotion  to  books.  A 
man  gets  shy,  "dysopic,"  as  old  Timothy  Bright  calls 
it,  and  shuns  the  looks  of  men,  and  blushes  like  a  girl. 
The  strength  of  a  student  of  men  is  to  travel — to 
study  men,  their  habits,  character,  mode  of  life,  their 
behavior  under  varied  conditions,  their  vices,  virtues, 
and  peculiarities.  Begin  with  a  careful  observation 
of  your  fellow  students  and  of  your  teachers;  then, 
every  patient  you  see  is  a  lesson  in  much  more  than  the 
malady  from  which  he  suffers.  Mix  as  much  as  you 
possibly  can  with  the  outside  world,  and  learn  its  ways. 
Cultivated  systematically,  the  student  societies,  the 
students'  union,  the  gymnasium,  and  the  outside  social 
circle  will  enable  you  to  conquer  the  diffidence  so  apt 
to  go  with  bookishness  and  which  may  prove  a  very 
serious  drawback  in  after-life.  I  cannot  too  strongly 
impress  upon  the  earnest  and  attentive  men  among 
you  the  necessity  of  overcoming  this  unfortunate  fail- 
ing in  your  student  days.  ,  It  is  not  easy  for  every  one 


142  fVilliam  Osier 

to  reach  a  happy  medium,  and  the  distinction  between 
a  proper  self-confidence  and  "cheek,"  particularly  in 
junior  students,  is  not  always  to  be  made.  The  latter 
is  met  with  chiefly  among  the  student  pilgrims  who,  in 
traveling  down  the  Delectable  Mountains,  have  gone 
astray  and  have  passed  to  the  left  hand,  where  lieth  the 
country  of  Conceit,  the  country  in  which  you  remember 
the  brisk  lad  Ignorance  met  Christian. 

I  wish  we  could  encourage  on  this  continent  among 
our  best  students  the  habit  of  wandering.  I  do  not 
know  that  we  are  quite  prepared  for  it,  as  there  is  still 
great  diversity  in  the  curricula,  even  among  the  lead- 
ing schools,  but  it  is  undoubtedly  a  great  advantage  to 
study  under  different  teachers,  as  the  mental  horizon  is 
widened  and  the  sympathies  enlarged.  The  practice 
would  do  much  to  lessen  that  narrow  **I  am  of  Paul 
and  I  am  of  Apollos"  spirit  which  is  hostile  to  the  best 
interests  of  the  profession. 

There  is  much  that  I  would  like  to  say  on  the  ques- 
tion of  work,  but  I  can  spare  only  a  few  moments  for 
a  word  or  two.  Who  will  venture  to  settle  upon  so 
simple  a  matter  as  the  best  time  for  work?  One  will 
tell  us  there  is  no  best  time ;  all  are  equally  good ;  and 
truly,  all  times  are  the  same  to  a  man  whose  soul  is 
absorbed  in  some  great  problem.  The  other  day  I 
asked  Edward  Martin,  the  well-known  story-writer, 
what  time  he  found  best  fcgr  work.    "Not  in  the  eve- 


The.  Student  Life  I43 

ning,  and  never  between  meals !"  was  his  answer,  which 
may  appeal  to  some  of  my  hearers.  One  works  best 
at  night;  another,  in  the  morning;  a  majority  of  the 
students  of  the  past  favor  the  latter.  Erasmus,  the 
great  exemplar,  says,  "Never  work  at  night;  it  dulls 
the  brain  and  hurts  the  health."  One  day,  going  with 
George  Ross  through  Bedlam,  Dr.  Savage,  at  that  time 
the  physician  in  charge,  remarked  upon  two  great 
groups  of  patients — those  who  w^ere  depressed  in  the 
morning  and  those  who  were  cheerful,  and  he  suggested 
that  the  spirits  rose  and  fell  with  the  bodily  tempera- 
ture— those  with  very  low  morning  temperatures  were 
depressed,  and  vice  versa.  This,  I  believe,  expresses  a 
truth  which  may  explain  the  extraordinary  difference 
in  the  habits  of  students  in  this  matter  of  the  time  at 
which  the  best  work  can  be  done.  Outside  of  the 
asylum  there  are  also  the  two  great  types,  the  student- 
lark  who  loves  to  see  the  sun  rise,  who  comes  to  break- 
fast with  a  cheerful  morning  face,  never  so  "fit'*  as  at 
6  A.  M.  We  all  know  the  type.  What  a  contrast  to 
the  student-owl  with  his  saturnine  morning  face,  thor- 
oughly unhappy,  cheated  by  the  wretched  breakfast 
bell  of  the  two  best  hours  of  the  day  for  sleep,  no  ap- 
petite, and  permeated  with  an  unspeakable  hostility  to 
his  vis-a-vis,  whose  morning  garrulity  and  good  hu- 
mor are  equally  offensive.  Only  gradually,  as  the  day 
wears  on  and  his  temperature  riees,  does  he  become 


144  William  Osier 

endurable  to  himself  and  to  others.  But  see  him  really 
awake  at  lo  p.  m.  while  our  blithe  lark  is  in  hopeless 
coma  over  his  books,  from  which  it  is  hard  to  rouse 
him  sufficiently  to  get  his  boots  off  for  bed,  our  lean 
owl-friend,  Saturn  no  longer  in  the  ascendant,  with 
bright  eyes  and  cheery  face,  is  ready  for  four  hours  of 
anything  you  wish — deep  study,  or 

Heart  affluence  in  discoursive  talk, 
and  by  2  a.  m.  he  will  undertake  to  unsphere  the  spirit 
of  Plato.  In  neither  a  virtue,  in  neither  a  fault  we 
must  recognize  these  two  types  of  students,  differently 
constituted,  owing  possibly — though  I  have  but  little 
evidence  for  the  belief — ^to  thermal  peculiarities. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  DRAMA 
By  Stephen  Leacock 

Nineteen  hundred  and  ten  was  an  important  year.  Halley's 
comet  came  along,  and  some  predicted  the  End  of  the  World. 
And  Stephen  Leacock's  first  humorous  book — Literary  Lapses — 
was  published.  First  humorous  book,  I  said,  for  Mr.  Leacock— 
who  is  professor  of  political  economy  at  McGill  University, 
Montreal — had  published  his  Elements  of  Political  Science  in 
1906. 

It  seems-  to  me  that  I  have  heard  that  Literary  Lapses  was 
obscurely  or  privately  pubHshed  in  Canada  before  1910;  that 
Mr.  John  Lane,  the  famous  London  publisher,  was  given  a  copy 
by  some  one  as  he  got  on  a  steamer  to  go  home  to  England ; 
that  he  read  it  on  the  voyage  and  cabled  an  offer  for  it  as  soon 
as  he  landed.  This  is  very  vague  in  my  mind,  but  it  sounds 
probable.  At  any  rate,  since  that  time  Professor  Leacock's  hu- 
morous volumes  have  appeared  with  gratifying  regularity — Non- 
:!ense  Novels,  Behind  the  Beyond,  etc.:  and  some  more  serious 
books  too,  such  as  Essays  and  Literary  Studies  and  The  Un~ 
solved  Riddle  of  Social  Justice.  One  of  the  unsolved  riddles 
of  social  injustice  is,  why  should  Professor  Leacock  be  so  much 
more  amusing  than  most  people? 

We  usually  think  of  him  as  a  Canadian,  but  he  was  born  in 
England  in  1869. 

Coming  up  home  the  other  night  in  my  car  (the 
Guy  Street  car),  I  heard  a  man  who  was  hanging  onto 
a  strap  say:  "The  drama  is  just  turning  into  a  bunch 
of  talk."  This  set  me  thinking;  and  I  was  glad  that  it 
did,  because  I  am  being  paid  by  this  paper  to  think  once 
a  week,  and  it  is  wearing.  Some  days  I  never  think 
from  morning  till  night. 

This  decline  of  the  drama  is  a  thing  on  which  I 
feel  deeply  and  bitterly;  for  I  am,  or  I  have  been, 


146  Stephen  Leacock 

something  of  an  actor  myself.  I  have  only  been  in 
amateur  work,  I  admit,  but  still  I  have  played  some 
mighty  interesting  parts.  I  have  acted  in  Shakespeare 
as  a  citizen,  I  have  been  a  fairy  in  "A  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,"  and  I  was  once  one  end  (choice  of 
ends)  of  a  camel  in  a  pantomime.  I  have  had  other 
parts  too,  such  as  "x\  Voice  Speaks  From  Within,"  or 
*'A  Noise  Is  Heard  Without,"  or  a  ''Bell  Rings  From 
Behind,"  and  a  lot  of  things  like  that.  I  played  as 
A  Noise  for  seven  nights,  before  crowded  houses 
where  people  were  being  turned  away  from  the  door; 
and  I  have  been  a  Groan  and  a  Sigh  and  a  Tumult,  and 
once  I  was  a  "Vision  Passes  Before  the  Sleeper." 

So  when  I  talk  of  acting  and  of  the  spirit  of  the 
Drama,  I  speak  of  what  I  know. 

Naturally,  too,  I  was  brought  into  contact,  very 
often  into  quite  intimate  personal  contact,  with  some  of 
the  greatest  actors  of  the  day.  I  don't  say  it  in  any 
way  of  boasting,  but  merely  because  to  those  of  us  who 
love  the  stage  all  dramatic  souvenirs  are  interesting. 
I  remember,  for  example,  that  when  Wilson  Barrett 
played  ''The  Bat"  and  had  to  wear  the  queer  suit  with 
the  scales,  it  was  I  who  put  the  glue  on  him. 

And  I  recall  a  conversation  with  Sir  Henry  Irving 
one  night  when  he  said  to  me,  "Fetch  me  a  glass  of 
water,  will  you?"  and  I  said,  "Sir  Henry,  it  is  not  only 
a  pleasure  to  get  it  but  it  is  to  me,  as  a  humble  devotee 


The  Decline  of  the  Drama  147 

of  the  art  that  you  have  ennobled,  a  high  privilege. 
I  will  go  further — "  "Do/'  he  said.  Henry  was  like 
that,  quick,  sympathetic,  what  we  call  in  French 
^Vibrant." 

Forbes  Robertson  I  shall  never  forget :  he  owes  me 
50  cents.  And  as  for  Martin  Harvey — I  simply  cannot 
call  him  Sir  John,  we  are  such  dear  old  friends — he 
never  comes  to  this  town  without  at  once  calling  in  my 
services  to  lend  a  hand  in  his  production.  No  doubt 
everybody  knows  that  splendid  play  in  which  he  ap- 
pears, called  "The  Breed  of  the  Treshams." 

There  is  a  torture  scene  in  it,  a  most  gruesome  thing. 
Harvey,  as  the  hero,  has  to  be  tortured,  not  on  the 
stage  itself,  but  off  the  stage  in  a  little  room  at  the 
side.  You  can  hear  him  howling  as  he  is  tortured. 
Well,  it  was  I  who  was  torturing  him.  We  are  so  used 
to  working  together  that  Harvey  didn't  want  to  let  any- 
body do  it  but  me. 

So  naturally  I  am  a  keen  friend  and  student  of  the 
Drama:  and  I  hate  to  think  of  it  going  all  to  pieces. 

The  trouble  with  it  is  that  it  is  becoming  a  mere  mass 
of  conversation  and  reflection :  nothing  happens  in  it ; 
the  action  is  all  going  out  of  it  and  there  is  nothing 
left  but  thought.  When  actors  begin  to  think,  it  is 
time  for  a  change.    They  are  not  fitted  for  it. 

Now  in  my  day — I  mean  when  I  was  at  the  apogee 
of  my  reputation  (I  think  that  is  the  word — it  may  be 


148  Stephen  Leacock 

apologee — I  forget) — things  were  very  different. 
What  we  wanted  was  action — striking,  climatic,  catas- 
trophic action,  in  which  things  not  only  happened,  but 
happened  suddenly  and  all  in  a  lump. 

And  we  always  took  care  that  the  action  happened 
in  some  place  that  was  worth  while,  not  simply  in  an 
ordinary  room  with  ordinary  furniture,  the  way  it  is 
in  the  new  drama.  The  scene  was  laid  in  a  lighthouse 
(top  story),  or  in  a  mad  house  (at  midnight),  or  in  a 
power  house,  or  a  dog  house,  or  a  bath  house,  in  short, 
in  some  place  with  a  distinct  local  color  and  atmos- 
phere. 

I  remember  in  the  case  of  the  first  play  I  ever  wrote 
(I  write  plays,  too)  the  manager  to  whom  I  submitted 
it  asked  me  at  once,  the  moment  he  glanced  at  it. 
"Where  is  the  action  of  this  laid?"  ''It  is  laid,"  I  an- 
swered, "in  the  main  sewer  of  a  great  city."  "Good, 
good,"  he  said ;  "keep  it  there." 

In  the  case  of  another  play  the  manager  said  to  me, 
"What  are  you  doing  for  atmosphere?"  "The  opening 
act,"  I  said,  "is  in  a  steam  laundry."  "Very  good,"  he 
answered  as  he  turned  over  the  pages,  "and  have  you 
brought  in  a  condemned  cell?"  I  told  him  that  I  had 
not.  "That's  rather  unfortunate,"  he  said,  "because 
we  are  especially  anxious  to  bring  in  a  condemned  cell. 
Three  of  the  big  theaters  have  got  them  this  season, 
and  I  think  we  ought  to  have  it  in.     Can  you  do  it?" 


The  Decline  of  the  Drama  149 

"Yes,"  I  said,  "I  can,  if  it's  wanted.  Fll  look  through 
the  cast,  and  no  doubt  I  can  find  one  at  least  of  them 
that  ought  to  be  put  to  death."  "Yes,  yes,"  said  the 
manager  enthusiastically,  "I  am  sure  you  can." 

But  I  think  of  all  the  settings  that  we  used,  the  light- 
house plays  were  the  best.  There  is  something  about  a 
lighthouse  that  you  don't  get  in  a  modern  drawing 
room.  What  it  is,  I  don't  know;  but  there's  a  differ- 
ence. I  always  have  liked  a  lighthouse  play,  and  never 
have  enjoyed  acting  so  much,  have  never  thrown  my- 
self into  acting  so  deeply,  as  in  a  play  of  that  sort. 

There  is  something  about  a  lighthouse — the  way  you 
see  it  in  the  earlier  scenes — with  the  lantern  shining 
out  over  the  black  waters  that  suggests  security,  fidelity, 
faithfulness,  to  a  trust.  The  stage  used  generally  to 
be  dim  in  the  first  part  of  a  lighthouse  play,  and  you 
could  see  the  huddled  figures  of  the  fishermen  and  their 
wives  on  the  foreshore  pointing  out  to  the  sea  (the 
back  of  the  stage). 

"See,"  one  cried  with  his  arm  extended,  "there  is 
lightning  in  yon  sky."  (I  was  the  lightning  and  that 
my  cue  for  it)  :  "God  help  all  the  poor  souls  at  sea 
to-night !"  Then  a  woman  cried,  "Look !  Look !  a  boat 
upon  the  reef !"  And  as  she  said  it  I  had  to  rush  round 
and  work  the  boat  to  make  it  go  up  and  down  properly. 
Then  there  was  more  lightning,  and  some  one  screamed 
out,  "Look !   See !  there's  a  woman  in  the  boat  !'* 


150  Stephen  Leacock 

There  wasn't  really ;  it  was  me ;  but  in  the  darkness 
it  was  all  the  same,  and  of  course  the  heroine  herself 
couldn't  be  there  yet  because  she  had  to  be  downstairs 
getting  dressed  to  be  drowned.  Then  they  all  cried 
out,  "Poor  soul!  she's  doomed,"  and  all  the  fishermen 
ran  up  and  down  making  a  noise. 

Fishermen  in  those  plays  used  to  get  fearfully  ex- 
cited ;  and  what  with  the  excitement  and  the  darkness 
and  the  bright  beams  of  the  lighthouse  falling  on  the 
wet  oilskins,  and  the  thundering  of  the  sea  upon  the 
reef — ah!  me,  those  were  plays!  That  was  acting! 
And  to  think  that  there  isn't  a  single  streak  of  lightning 
in  any  play  on  the  boards  this  year ! 

And  then  the  kind  of  climax  that  a  play  like  this 
used  to  have !  The  scene  shifted  right  at  the  moment 
of  the  excitement,  and  lo !  we  are  in  the  tower,  the  top 
story  of  the  lighthouse,  interior  scene.  All  is  still  and 
quiet  within,  with  the  bright  light  of  the  reflectors 
flooding  the  little  room,  and  the  roar  of  the  storm  heard 
like  muffled  thunder  outside. 

The  lighthouse  keeper  trims  his  lamps.  How  firm 
and  quiet  and  rugged  he  looks.  The  snows  of  sixty 
winters  are  on  his  head,  but  his  eye  is  clear  and  his 
grip  strong.  Hear  the  howl  of  the  wind  as  he  opens 
the  door  and  steps  forth  upon  the  iron  balcony,  eighty 
feet  above  the  water,  and  peers  out  upon  the  storm. 

"God  pity  all  the  poor  souls  at  sea !"  he  says.    (They 


The  Decline  of  the  Drama  151 

all  say  that.  If  you  get  used  to  it,  and  get  to  like  it, 
you  want  to  hear  it  said,  no  matter  how  often  they 
say  it.)  The  waves  rage  beneath  him.  (I  threw  it  at 
him,  really,  but  the  effect  was  wonderful.) 

And  then,  as  he  comes  in  from  the  storm  to  the  still 
room,  the  climax  breaks.  A  man  staggers  into  the 
room  in  oilskins,  drenched,  wet,  breathless.  (They 
all  staggered  in  these  plays,  and  in  the  new  drama 
they  walk,  and  the  effect  is  feebleness  itself.)  He 
points  to  the  sea.  "A  boat!  A  boat  upon  the  reef! 
With  a  woman  in  it." 

And  the  lighthouse  keeper  knows  that  it  is  his  only 
daughter — the  only  one  that  he  has — who  is  being  cast 
to  death  upon  the  reef.  Then  comes  the  dilemma. 
They  want  him  for  the  lifeboat;  no  one  can  take  it 
through  the  surf  but  him.  You  know  that  because  the 
other  man  says  so  himself. 

But  if  he  goes  in  the  boat  then  the  great  light  will 
go  out.  Untended  it  cannot  live  in  the  storm.  And 
if  it  goes  out — ah!  if  it  goes  out — ^ask  of  the  angry 
waves  and  the  resounding  rocks  of  what  to-night's 
long  toll  of  death  must  be  without  the  light! 

I  wish  you  could  have  seen  it — ^you  who  only  see  the 
drawing-room  plays  of  to-day — the  scene  when  the 
Hghthouse  man  draws  himself  up,  calm  and  resolute, 
and  says:  "My  place  is  here.  God's  will  be  done." 
And  you  know  that  as  he  says  it  and  turns  quietly  to 


152  Stephen  Leacock 

his  lamps  again,  the  boat  is  drifting,  at  that  very  mo- 
ment, to  the  rocks. 

"How  did  they  save  her?"  My  dear  sir,  if  you  can 
ask  that  question  you  little  understand  the  drama  as 
it  was.  Save  her?  No,  of  course  they  didn't  save  her. 
What  we  wanted  in  the  Old  Drama  was  reality  and 
force,  no  matter  how  wild  and  tragic  it  might  be. 
They  did  not  save  her.  They  found  her  the  next  day, 
in  the  concluding  scene — all  that  was  left  of  her  when 
she  was  dashed  upon  the  rocks.  Her  ribs  were  broken. 
Her  bottom  boards  had  been  smashed  in,  her  gunwale 
was  gone — in  short,  she  was  a  wreck. 

The  girl?  Oh,  yes,  certainly  they  saved  the  girl. 
That  kind  of  thing  was  always  taken  care  of.  You 
see  just  a?  the  lighthouse  man  said  "God's  will  be 
done,"  his  eye  fell  on  a  long  coil  of  rope,  hanging 
there.  Providential,  wasn't  it?  But  then  we  were  not 
ashamed  to  use  Providence  in  the  Old  Drama.  So  he 
made  a  noose  in  it  and  threw  it  over  the  balcony  and 
hauled  the  girl  up  on  it.  I  used  to  hook  her  on  to  it 
every  night. 

A  rotten  play?  Oh,  I  am  sure  it  must  have  been. 
But,  somehow,  those  of  us  who  were  brought  up  on 
that  sort  of  thing,  still  sigh  for  it. 


AMERICA  AND  THE  ENGLISH  TRADITION 
By  Harry  Morgan  Ayres 

This  admirable  summary  of  Anglo-American  history  first  ap- 
peared (February,  1920)  as  an  editorial  in  the  Weekly  Rcviezv. 
It  seemed  to  me  then,  and  still  does,  as  a  model  in  that  form 
of  writing,  perfect  in  lucidity,  temperance  and  good  sense.  Mr. 
Ayres  is  a  member  of  the  faculty  of  Columbia  University  (De- 
partment of  English)  and  also  one  of  the  editors  of  the  Weekly 
Review.  Beowulf,  Chaucer,  Shakespeare  and  Seneca  seem  to 
be  his  favorite  hobbies. 

To  sum  up  the  gist  of  Anglo-American  relations  in  half  a 
dozen  pages,  as  Mr.  Ayres  does  here,  is  surely  a  remarkable 
achievement. 

The  recently  established  chair  in  the  history,  litera- 
ture, and  institutions  of  the  United  States  which  is  to 
be  shared  among  the  several  universities  of  Great 
Britain,  is  quite  different  from  the  exchange  profes- 
sorships of  sometimes  unhappy  memory.  It  is  not  at 
all  the  idea  to  carry  over  one  of  our  professors  each 
year  and  indoctrinate  him  with  the  true  culture  at  its 
source.  The  occupant  of  the  chair  will  be,  if  the  an- 
nounced intention  is  carried  out,  quite  as  often  British 
as  American,  and  quite  as  likely  a  public  man  as  a 
professor.  The  chief  object  is  to  bring  to  England 
a  better  knowledge  of  the  United  States,  and  a  pur- 
pose more  laudable  can  scarcely  be  imagined.  Peace 
and  prosperity  will  endure  in  the  world  in  some  very 

153 


154  Harry  Morgan  Ay  res 

precise  relation  to  the  extent  to  which  England  suc- 
ceeds in  understanding  us. 

It  is  not  an  illusion  to  suppose  that  our  understand- 
ing of  the  British  is  on  the  whole  better  than  theirs  of 
us.  The  British  Empire  is  a  large  and  comparatively 
simple  fact,  now  conspicuously  before  the  world  for  a 
long  time.  The  United  States  was,  in  British  eyes, 
until  recently,  a  comparatively  insignificant  fact,  yet 
vastly  more  complicated  than  they  imagined.  Each,  of 
course,  perfectly  knew  the  faults  of  the  other, 
assessed  with  an  unerring  cousinly  eye.  The 
American  bragged  in  a  nasal  whine,  the  Briton 
patronized  in  a  throaty  burble.  Whoever  among 
the  struggling  nations  of  the  world  might  win, 
England  saw  to  it  that  she  never  lost;  your  Yankee 
was  content  with  the  more  ignoble  triumphs  of  mer- 
chandising, willing  to  cheapen  life  if  he  could  only 
add  to  his  dollars.  But  the  excellence  of  English 
political  institutions  and  methods,  the  charm  of  Eng- 
lish life,  the  tremendous  power  of  the  Empire  for  pro- 
moting freedom  and  civilization  in  the  world,  these 
are  things  which  Americans  have  long  recognized  and 
in  a  way  understood.  Anything  like  an  equivalent 
British  appreciation  of  America  in  the  large  seems 
confined  to  a  very  few  honorable  exceptions  among 
them.  Admiration  for  Niagara,  which  is  half  Brit- 
ish anyway,  or  enthusiasm  for  the  ''Wild  West" — • 


America  and  the  English   Tradition     155 

your  better-class  Englishman  always  thrills  to  the 
frontier — is  no  step  at  all  toward  rightly  appreciat- 
ing America. 

To  no  inconsiderable  extent  this  is  America's  own 
fault.  She  does  not  present  to  the  world  a  record 
that  is  easily  read.  It  is  obvious,  for  instance — and 
so  obvious  that  it  is  not  often  enough  stated — that 
America  has  and  will  continue  to  have  a  fundamen- 
tally English  civilization.  English  law  is  the  basis  of 
her  law.  English  speech  is  her  speech,  and  if  with  a 
difference,  it  is  a  difference  that  the  philologist,  all 
things  considered,  finds  amazingly  small.  English 
literature  is  her  literature — Chaucer  and  Shakespeare 
hers  because  her  blood  then  coursed  indistinguishably 
through  the  English  heart  they  knew  so  well ;  Milton, 
Dryden,  and  the  Queen  Anne  men  hers,  because  she 
was  still  a  part  of  England;  the  later  men  hers  by 
virtue  of  affectionate  acquaintanceship  and  a  gen- 
erous and  not  inconsiderable  rivalry.  English  history, 
in  short,  is  her  history.  The  struggles  of  the  thir- 
teenth century  through  which  law  and  parliament  camQ. 
into  being,  the  struggles  of  the  seventeenth  centurji 
through  which  law  and  parliament  came  to  rule,  are 
America's  struggles  upon  which  she  can  look  back 
with  the  satisfaction  that  some  things  that  have  been 
done  in  the  world  need  never  be  undone  or  done  over 
again,  whatever  the  room  for  improvement  may  still 


156  Harry  Morgan  Ayres 

be.  Americans,  no  less  than  British,  recognize  that 
independence  was  largely  an  accidental  result  of  a 
war  which  sprang  out  of  a  false  theory  of  economics, 
but  whose  conclusion  carried  with  it  a  lesson  in  the 
management  of  empire  which  subsequent  history  shows 
the  British  to  have  learned  thoroughly  and  for  the 
benefit  of  all  concerned.  American  independence, 
however,  once  established,  pointed  a  way  to  demo- 
cratic freedom  which  England  hastened  to  follow. 
This  we  know.     And  yet — 

And  yet  we  allow  these  obvious  and  fundamental 
considerations  to  become  marvelously  obscured.  We 
allow  England's  failure  to  solve  an  insoluble  Irish 
problem  to  arouse  in  us  an  attitude  of  mind  possibly 
excusable  in  some  Irishmen,  but  wholly  inexcusable 
in  any  American.  We  allow  a  sentimental  regard  for 
some  immigrant  from  Eastern  Europe,  who  comes  to 
us  with  a  philosophy  bom  of  conditions  that  in  Eng- 
lish-speaking lands  ceased  to  be  centuries  ago,  to  make 
us  pretend  to  see  in  him  the  true  expression  of  Amer- 
ica's traditional  ideals.  We  allow  ourselves  to  be  far 
too  easy  with  the  phrase,  "He  is  not  pro-German,  he 
is  merely  anti-British.''  Why  are  they  anti-British? 
Why  should  they  be  permitted  to  make  it  falsely  ap- 
pear that  recognition  of  the  English  basis  of  Amer- 
ica involves  approval  of  everything  that  England  in 


America  and  the  English   Tradition     157 

her  history  may  or  may  not  have  done?  Why  should 
they  be  allowed  to  pretend  that  disapproval  of  some 
particular  act  of  England  justifies  repudiation  of  most 
of  the  things  by  virtue  of  which  we  are  what  we  are? 
America  from  the  first  has  been  part  of  the  great 
English  experiment — great  because  it  is  capable  of 
learning  from  experience. 

The  world  has  put  a  big  investment  in  blood  and 
treasure,  and  all  that  they  imply,  into  the  education 
of  England.  It  is  satisfied — the  world's  response  to 
Germany's  insolent  challenge  is  the  proof  of  it — that 
its  pains  have  been  well  bestowed.  England  is  more 
nearly  fit  than  any  other  nation  to  wield  the  power 
that  is  hers.  That  is  not  to  deny  the  peculiar  virtues 
of  other  nations;  indeed,  these  virtues  have  largely 
contributed  to  the  result.  Italy  has  educated  her; 
France  has  educated  her;  we  have  done  something; 
and  Germany.  In  result,  she  is  not  perfect — the  Eng- 
lish would  perhaps  least  of  all  assert  that — ^but  she 
has  learned  a  great  deal  and  held  herself  steady  while 
she  learned  it.  It  is  a  bigger  job  than  the  world  cares 
to  undertake  to  teach  any  other  nation  so  much.  Nor 
would  it  be  at  all  likely  to  succeed  so  well.  For  what 
England  has  to  offer  the  world  in  return  is  not  simply 
her  institutions;  it  is  not  merely  a  formula  for  the 
effective  discharge  of  police  duty  throughout  the  world; 


,158  Harry  Morgan  Ayres 

it  is  the  English  freeman,  whether  he  hail  from  Can- 
ada, Australia,  Africa,  or  the  uttermost  isles  of  the 
sea. 

A  most  adaptable  fellow,  this  freeman,  doing  all 
sorts  of  work  everywhere,  and  with  tremendous 
powers  of  assimilation.  Consider  him  in  his  origins. 
He  began  by  assimilating  fully  his  own  weight  in 
Danes,  while  remaining  an  English  freeman.  He  then 
perforce  accepted  a  Norman  king,  as  he  had  accepted 
a  Danish  one,  hoping,  as  always,  that  the  king  would 
not  trouble  him  too  much.  But  when  Norman  Wil- 
liam, who  was  very  ill-informed  about  the  breed,  killed 
off  most  of  his  natural  leaders  and  harried  the  rest 
into  villeiny,  how  did  he  manage  in  a  small  matter  of 
two  hundred  years  or  so  to  make  an  English  gentle- 
man not  only  of  himself  but  of  all  the  rag-tag  of  ad- 
venturers who  had  come  over  with  William  and  since  ? 
How  did  he  contrive,  out  of  a  band  of  exiles  fleeing 
from  an  Egypt  of  ecclesiastical  tyranny,  broken 
younger  sons,  artisans  out  of  a  job,  speculators,  bond- 
men, Swedes,  Dutchmen,  and  what  not,  to  make  Amer- 
ica ?  Is  he  one  likely  to  lose  his  bearings  when  in  his 
America  the  age-old  problem  again  heaves  in  view? 
This  is  a  job  he  has  been  working  at  pretty  success- 
fully for  more  than  a  thousand  years.  Grant  him  a 
moment  to  realize  himself  afresh  in  the  face  of  it. 
Don't  expect  him  to  stop  and  give  a  coherent  explana- 


America  and  the  English  Tradition     159 

tion  of  what  he  is  doing.  He  wouldn't  be  the  true 
son  of  the  English  tradition  that  he  is  if  he  could  do 
that.  Perhaps  the  occupants  of  the  new  chair  can 
do  something  of  the  sort  for  him. 


THE  FIFTY-FIRST  DRAGON 
By  Heywood  Broun 

Heywood  Broun,  who  has  risen  rapidly  through  tAe  ranks  of 
newspaper  honor  from  sporting  reporter  and  war  correspondent 
to  one  of  the  most  highly  regarded  dramatic  and  literary  critics 
in  the  country,  graduated  from  Harvard  in  1910;  was  several 
years  on  the  New  York  Tribune,  and  is  now  on  the  World. 

There  is  no  more  substantially  gifted  newspaper  man  in  his 
field;  his  beautifully  spontaneous  humor  and  drollery  are  coun- 
terbalanced by  a  fine  imaginative  sensitiveness  and  a  remarkable 
power  in  the  fable  or  allegorical  essay,  such  as  the  one  here 
reprinted.  His  book,  Seeing  Things  at  Night,  is  only  the  first- 
fruit  of  truly  splendid  possibilities,  li  I  may  be  allowed  to 
prophesy,  thus  hazarding  all,  I  will  say  that  Heywood  Broun 
is  likely,  in  the  next  ten  or  fifteen  years,  to  do  as  fine  work, 
both  imaginative  and  critical,  as  any  living  American  of  his  era. 

Of  all  the  pupils  at  the  knight  school  Gawaine  le 
Coeur-Hardy  was  among  the  least  promising.  He  was 
tall  and  sturdy,  but  his  instructors  soon  discovered  that 
he  lacked  spirit.  He  would  hide  in  the  woods  when 
the  jousting  class  was  called,  although  his  companions 
and  members  of  the  faculty  sought  to  appeal  to  his 
better  nature  by  shouting  to  him  to  come  out  and  break 
his  neck  like  a  man.  Even  when  they  told  him  that  the 
lances  were  padded,  the  horses  no  more  than  ponies 
and  the  field  unusually  soft  for  late  autumn,  Gawaine 
refused  to  grow  enthusiastic.  The  Headmaster  and 
the  Assistant  Professor  of  Pleasaunce  were  discussing 
the  case  one  spring  afternoon  and  the  Assistant  Pro- 
fessor could  see  no  remedy  but  expulsion. 

160 


The  Fifty -first  Dragon  i6i 

"No,"  said  the  Headmaster,  as  he  looked  out  at 
the  purple  hills  which  ringed  the  school,  *'I  think  I'll 
train  him  to  slay  dragons." 

''He  might  be  killed,"  objected  the  Assistant  Pro- 
fessor. 

"So  he  might,"  replied  the  Headmaster  brightly,  but 
he  added,  more  soberly,  '*we  must  consider  the  greater 
good.  We  are  responsible  for  the  formation  of  this 
lad's  character." 

"Are  the  dragons  particularly  bad  this  year?"  inter- 
rupted the  Assistant  Professor.  This  was  characteris- 
tic. He  always  seemed  restive  when  the  head  of  the 
school  began  to  talk  ethics  and  the  ideals  of  the  institu- 
tion. 

"I've  never  known  them  worse,"  replied  the  Head- 
master. "Up  in  the  hills  to  the  south  last  week  they 
killed  a  number  of  peasants,  two  cows  and  a  prize  pig. 
And  if  this  dry  spell  holds  there's  no  telling  when  they 
may  start  a  forest  fire  simply  by  breathing  around 
indiscriminately." 

"Would  any  refund  on  the  tuition  fee  be 
necessary  in  case  of  an  accident  to  young  Coeur- 
Hardy?" 

"No,"  the  principal  answered,  judicially,  "that's  all 
covered  in  the  contract.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  he 
won't  be  killed.  Before  I  send  him  up  in  the  hills  Tm 
going  to  give  him  a  magic  word." 


1 62  Hey  wood  Broun 

'That's  a  good  idea,"  said  the  Professor.  "Some- 
times they  work  wonders." 

From  that  day  on  Gawaine  specialized  in  dragons. 
His  course  included  both  theory  and  practice.  In  the 
morning  there  were  long  lectures  on  the  history, 
anatomy,  manners  and  customs  of  dragons.  Gawaine 
did  not  distinguish  himself  in  these  studies.  He  had 
a  marvelously  versatile  gift  for  forgetting  things.  In 
the  afternoon  he  showed  to  better  advantage,  for  then 
he  would  go  down  to  the  South  Meadow  and  practise 
with  a  battle-ax.  In  this  exercise  he  was  truly  impres- 
sive, for  he  had  enormous  strength  as  well  as  speed 
and  grace.  He  even  developed  a  deceptive  display  of 
ferocity.  Old  alumni  say  that  it  was  a  thrilling  sight 
to  see  Gawaine  charging  across  the  field  toward  the 
dummy  paper  dragon  which  had  been  set  up  for  his 
practice.  As  he  ran  he  would  brandish  his  ax  and 
shout  "A  murrain  on  thee  T*  or  some  other  vivid  bit 
of  campus  slang.  It  never  took  him  more  than  one 
stroke  to  behead  the  dummy  dragon. 

Gradually  his  task  was  made  more  difficult.  Paper 
gave  way  to  papier-mache  and  finally  to  wood,  but 
even  the  toughest  of  these  dummy  dragons  had  no 
terrors  for  Gawaine.  One  sweep  of  the  ax  always  did 
the  business.  There  were  those  who  said  that  when 
the  practice  was  protracted  until  dusk  and  the  dragons 
threw   long,    fantastic   shadows   across   the   meadow 


The  Fifty -first  Dragon  165 

Gawaine  did  not  charge  so  impetuously  nor  shout  so 
loudly.  It  is  possible  there  was  mahce  in  this  charge. 
At  any  rate,  the  Headmaster  decided  by  the  end  of 
June  that  it  was  time  for  the  test.  Only  the  night  be- 
fore a  dragon  had  come  close  to  the  school  grounds 
and  had  eaten  some  of  the  lettuce  from  the  garden. 
The  faculty  decided  that  Gawaine  was  ready.  They 
gave  him  a  diploma  and  a  new  battle-ax  and 
the  Headmaster  summoned  him  to  a  private  confer- 
ence. 

"Sit  down,"  said  the  Headmaster.  "Have  a  ciga- 
rette.'' 

Gawaine  hesitated. 

"Oh,  I  know  it's  against  the  rules,"  said  the  Head- 
master. "But  after  all,  you  have  received  your  pre- 
liminary degree.  You  are  no  longer  a  boy.  You  are  a 
man.  To-morrow  you  will  go  out  into  the  world,  the 
great  world  of  achievement." 

Gawaine  took  a  cigarette.  The  Headmaster  offered 
him  a  match,  but  he  produced  one  of  his  own  and 
began  to  puff  away  with  a  dexterity  which  quite 
amazed  the  principal, 

"Here  you  have  learned  the  theories  of  life,"  con- 
tinued the  Headmaster,  resuming  the  thread  of  his- 
discourse,  "but  after  all,  life  is  not  a  matter  of  theories. 
Life  is  a  matter  of  facts.  It  calls  on  the  young  and  the 
old  alike  to  face  these  facts,  even  though  they  are  hard 


164  Hey  wood  Broun 

and  sometimes  unpleasant.  Your  problem,  for  exam- 
ple, is  to  slay  dragons." 

"They  say  that  those  dragons  down  in  the  south 
wood  are  five  hundred  feet  long,"  ventured  Gawaine, 
timorously. 

"Stuff  and  nonsense !"  said  the  Headmaster.  "The 
curate  saw  one  last  week  from  the  top  of  Arthur's  Hill. 
The  dragon  was  sunning  himself  down  in  the  valley. 
The  curate  didn't  have  an  opportunity  to  look  at  him 
very  long  because  he  felt  it  was  his  duty  to  hurry  back 
to  make  a  report  to  me.  He  said  the  monster,  or  shall 
I  say,  the  big  lizard? — wasn't  an  inch  over  two  hun- 
dred feet.  But  the  size  has  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  it. 
You'll  find  the  big  ones  even  easier  than  the  little 
ones.  They're  far  slower  on  their  feet  and  less  aggres- 
sive, I'm  told.  .Besides,  before  you  go  I'm  going  to 
equip  you  in  such  fashion  that  you  need  have  no  fear 
of  all  the  dragons  in  the  world." 

"I'd  like  an  enchanted  cap,"  said  Gawaine. 

"What's  that?"  answered  the  Headmaster,  testily. 

"A  cap  to  make  me  disappear,"  explained  Gawaine. 

The  Headmaster  laughed  indulgently.  "You  mustn't 
believe  all  those  old  wives'  stories,"  he  said.  "There 
isn't  any  such  thing.  A  cap  to  make  you  disappear, 
indeed!  What  would  you  do  with  it?  You  haven't 
even  appeared  yet.  Why,  my  boy,  you  could  walk 
from  here  to  London,  and  nobody  would  so  much  as 


The  Fifty- first  Dragon  165 

look  at  you.    You're  nobody.    You  couldn't  be  more 
invisible  than  that." 

Gawaine  seemed  dangerously  close  to  a  relapse  into 
his  old  habit  of  whimpering.  The  Headmaster  reas- 
sured him :  "Don't  worry ;  I'll  give  you  something  much 
better  than  an  enchanted  cap.  I'm  going  to  give  you 
a  magic  word.  All  you  have  to  do  is  to  repeat  this 
magic  charm  once  and  no  dragon  can  possibly  harm  a 
hair  of  your  head.  You  can  cut  off  his  head  at  your 
leisure." 

He  took  a  heavy  book  from  the  shelf  behind  his  desk 
and  began  to  run  through  it.  "Sometimes,"  he  said, 
"the  charm  is  a  whole  phrase  or  even  a  sentence. 
I  might,  for  instance,  give  you  To  make  the' — No, 
that  might  not  do.  I  think  a  single  word  would  be 
best  for  dragons." 

"A  short  word,"  suggested  Gawaine. 

"It  can't  be  too  short  or  it  wouldn't  be  potent. 
There  isn't  so  much  hurry  as  all  that.  Here's  a  splen- 
did magic  word :  'Rumplesnitz.'  Do  you  think  you 
can  learn  that?" 

Gawaine  tried  and  in  an  hour  or  so  he  seemed  to 
have  the  word  well  in  hand.  Again  and  again  he  in- 
terrupted the  lesson  to  inquire,  "And  if  I  say  'Rumple- 
snitz*  the  dragon  can't  possibly  hurt  me?"  And  al-' 
ways  the  Headmaster  replied,  "If  you  only  gay  *Rum- 
plesnitz,'  you  are  perfectly  safe." 


i66  Heywood  Broun 

Toward  morning  Gawaine  seemed  resigned  to  his 
career.  At  daybreak  the  Headmaster  saw  him  to  the 
edge  of  the  forest  and  pointed  him  to  the  direction  in 
which  he  should  proceed.  About  a  mile  away  to  the 
southwest  a  cloud  of  steam  hovered  over  an  open 
meadow  in  the  woods  and  the  Headmaster  assured 
Gawaine  that  under  the  steam  he  would  find  a  dragon. 
Gawaine  went  forward  slowly.  He  wondered  whether 
it  would  be  best  to  approach  the  dragon  on  the  run 
as  he  did  in  his  practice  in  the  South  Meadow  or  to 
walk  slowly  toward  him,  shouting  "Rumplesnitz"  all 
the  way. 

The  problem  was  decided  for  him.  No  sooner  had 
he  come  to  the  fringe  of  the  meadow  than  the  dragon 
spied  him  and  began  to  charge.  It  was  a  large  dragon 
and  yet  it  seemed  decidedly  aggressive  in  spite  of 
the  Headmaster's  statement  to  the  contrary.  As  the 
dragon  charged  it  released  huge  clouds  of  hissing  steam 
through  its  nostrils.  It  was  almost  as  if  a  gigantic 
teapot  had  gone  mad.  The  dragon  came  forward  so 
fast  and  Gawaine  was  so  frightened  that  he  had  time 
to  say  "Rumplesnitz"  only  once.  As  he  said  it,  he 
swung  his  battle-ax  and  off  popped  the  head  of  the 
dragon.  Gawaine  had  to  admit  that  it  was  even  easier 
to  kill  a  real  dragon  than  a  wooden  one  if  only  you 
said  "Rumplesnitz." 

Gawaine  brought  the  ears  home  and  a  small  sectioii 


The  Fifty-first  Dragon  167 

of  the  tail.  His  school  mates  and  the  faculty  made 
much  of  him,  but  the  Headmaster  wisely  kept  him  from 
being  spoiled  by  insisting  that  he  go  on  with  his  work. 
Every  clear  day  Gawaine  rose  at  dawn  and  went  out  " 
to  kill  dragons.  The  Headmaster  kept  him  at  home 
when  it  rained,  because  he  said  the  woods  were  damp 
and  unhealthy  at  such  times  and  that  he  didn't  want 
the  boy  to  run  needless  risks.  Few  good  days  passed 
in  which  Gawaine  failed  to  get  a  dragon.  On  one 
particularly  fortunate  day  he  killed  three,  a  husband 
and  wife  and  a  visiting  relative.  Gradually  he  de- 
veloped a  technique.  Pupils  who  sometimes  watched 
him  from  the  hill-tops  a  long  way  off  said  that  he  often 
allowed  the  dragon  to  come  within  a  few  feet  before 
he  said  '^Rumplesnitz.'*  He  came  to  say  it  with  a 
mocking  sneer.  Occasionally  he  did  stunts.  Once 
when  an  excursion  party  from  London  was  watching 
him  he  went  into  action  with  his  right  hand  tied  behind 
his  back.    The  dragon's  head  came  off  just  as  easily. 

As  Gawaine's  record  of  killings  mounted  higher  the 
Headmaster  found  it  impossible  to  keep  him  com- 
pletely in  hand.  He  fell  into  the  habit  of  stealing  out 
at  night  and  engaging  in  long  drinking  bouts  at  the 
village  tavern.  It  was  after  such  a  debauch  that  he 
rose  a  little  before  dawn  one  fine  August  morning  and 
started  out  after  his  fiftieth  dragon.  His  head  was 
heavy  and  his  mind  sluggish.    He  was  heavy  in  other 


l68  Heywood  Broun 

respects  as  well,  for  be  had  adopted  the  somewhat 
vulgar  practice  of  wearing  his  medals,  ribbons  and  all, 
when  he  went  out  dragon  hunting.  The  decorations 
began  on  his  chest  and  ran  all  the  way  down  to  his 
abdomen.  They  must  have  weighed  at  least  eight 
pounds. 

Gawaine  found  a  dragon  in  the  same  meadow  where 
he  had  killed  the  first  one.  It  was  a  fair-sized  dragon, 
but  evidently  an  old  one.  Its  face  was  wrinkled  and 
Gawaine  thought  he  had  never  seen  so  hideous  a  coun- 
tenance. Much  to  the  lad's  disgust,  the  monster  re- 
fused to  charge  and  Gawaine  was  obliged  to  walk  to- 
ward him.  He  whistled  as  he  went.  The  dragon 
regarded  him  hopelessly,  but  craftily.  Of  course  it  had 
heard  of  Gawaine.  Even  when  the  lad  raised  his 
battle-ax  the  dragon  made  no  move.  It  knew  that 
there  was  no  salvation  in  the  quickest  thrust  of  the 
head,  for  it  had  been  informed  that  this  hunter  was 
protected  by  an  enchantment.  It  merely  waited,  hop- 
ing something  would  turn  up.  Gawaine  raised  the 
battle-ax  and  suddenly  lowered  it  again.  He  had 
grown  very  pale  and  he  trembled  violently.  The 
dragon  suspected  a  trick.  "What's  the  matter?"  it 
asked,  with  false  solicitude. 

"I've  forgotten  the  magic  word,"  stammered 
Gawaine. 

"What  a  pity,"  said  the  dragon.    "So  that  was  the 


The  Fifty-first  Dragon  169 

secret.  It  doesn't  seem  quite  sporting  to  me,  all  this 
magic  stuff,  you  know.  Not  cricket,  as  we  used  to  say 
when  I  was  a  little  dragon ;  but  after  all,  that's  a  mat- 
ter of  opinion." 

Gawaine  was  so  helpless  with  terror  that  the 
dragon's  confidence  rose  immeasurably  and  it  could 
not  resist  the  temptation  to  show  off  a  bit. 

"Could  I  possibly  be  of  any  assistance?"  it  asked. 
"What's  the  first  letter  of  the  magic  word?" 

"It  begins  with  an  V,' "  said  Gawaine  weakly. 

"Let's  see,"  mused  the  dragon,  "that  doesn't  tell  us 
much,  does  it ?  What  sort  of  a  word  is  this?  Is  it  an 
epithet,  do  you  think?" 

Gawaine  could  do  no  more  than  nod. 

"Why,  of  course,"  exclaimed  the  dragon,  "reaction- 
ary Republican." 

Gawaine  shook  his  head. 

"Well,  then,"  said  the  dragon,  "we'd  better  get  down 
to  business.    Will  you  surrender?" 

With  the  suggestion  of  a  compromise  Gawaine  mus- 
tered up  enough  courage  to  speak. 

"What  will  you  do  if  I  surrender?"  he  asked. 

"Why,  I'll  eat  you,"  said  the  dragon. 

"And  if  I  don't  surrender?" 

"ni  eat  you  just  the  same." 

"Then  it  doesn't  mean  any  difference,  does  it?'^ 
moaned  Gawaine. 


170  Heywood  Broun 

*lt  does  to  me,"  said  the  dragon  with  a  smile.  "I'd 
rather  you  didn't  surrender.  You'd  taste  much  better 
if  you  didn't." 

The  dragon  waited  for  a  long  time  for  Gawaine  to 
ask  ''Why?"  but  the  boy  was  too  frightened  to  speak. 
At  last  the  dragon  had  to  give  the  explanation  without 
his  cue  line.  "You  see,"  he  said,  ''if  you  don't  surren- 
der you'll  taste  better  because  you'll  die  game." 

This  was  an  old  and  ancient  trick  of  the  dragon's. 
By  means  of  some  such  quip  he  was  accustomed  to 
paralyze  his  victims  with  laughter  and  then  to  destroy 
them.  Gawaine  was  sufficiently  paralyzed  as  it  was, 
but  laughter  had  no  part  in  his  helplessness.  With 
the  last  word  of  the  joke  the  dragon  drew  back  his  head 
and  struck.  In  that  second  there  flashed  into  the  mind 
of  Gawaine  the  magic  word  "Rumplesnitz,"  but  there 
was  no  time  to  say  it.  There  was  time  only  to  strike 
and,  without  a  word,  Gawaine  met  the  onrush  of  the 
dragon  with  a  full  swing.  He  put  all  his  back  and 
shoulders  into  it.  The  impact  was  terrific  and  the  head 
of  the  dragon  flew  away  almost  a  hundred  yards  and 
landed  in  a  thicket. 

Gawaine  did  not  remain  frightened  very  long  after 
the  death  of  the  dragon.  His  mood  was  one  of  won- 
der. He  was  enormously  puzzled.  He  cut  off  the  ears 
of  the  monster  almost  in  a  trance.  Again  and  again  he 
thought  to  himself,  "I  didn't  say  'Rumplesnitz*!"    He 


The  Fifty -first  Dragon  ^7^ 

was  sure  of  that  and  yet  there  was  no  question  that  he 
had  killed  the  dragon.  In  fact,  he  had  never  killed 
one  so  utterly.  Never  before  had  he  driven  a  head 
for  anything  like  the  same  distance.  Twenty-five 
yards  was  perhaps  his  best  previous  record.  AH  the 
way  back  to  the  knight  school  he  kept  rumbling  about 
in  his  mind  seeking  an  explanation  for  what  had  oc- 
curred. He  went  to  the  Headmaster  immediately  and 
after  closing  the  door  told  him  what  had  happened.  **I 
didn't  say  'Rumplesnitz/  "  he  explained  with  great 
earnestness. 

The  Headmaster  laughed.  "I'm  glad  you've  found 
out,"  he  said.  *Tt  makes  you  ever  so  much  more  of  a 
hero.  Don't  you  see  that?  Now  you  know  that  it 
was  you  who  killed  all  these  dragons  and  not  that 
foolish  little  word  'Rumplesnitz.'  " 

Gawaine  frowned.  "Then  it  wasn't  a  magic  word 
after  all?"  he  asked. 

"Of  course  not,"  said  the  Headmaster,  "you  ought 
to  be  too  old  for  such  foolishness.  There  isn't  any 
such  thing  as  a  magic  word." 

"But  you  told  me  it  was  magic,"  protested  Gawaine. 
'^ou  said  it  was  magic  and  now  you  say  it  isn't." 

"It  wasn't  magic  in  a  literal  sense,"  answered  the 
Headmaster,  "but  it  was  much  more  wonderful  than 
that.  The  word  gave  you  confidence.  It  took  away 
your  fears.    If  I  hadn't  told  you  that  you  might  have 


172  Heywood  Broun 

been  killed  the  very  first  time.  It  was  your  battle-ax 
did  the  trick." 

Gawaine  surprised  the  Headmaster  by  his  attitude. 
He  was  obviously  distressed  by  the  explanation.  He 
interrupted  a  long  philosophic  and  ethical  discourse  by 
the  Headmaster  with,  "If  I  hadn't  of  hit  'em  all  mighty 
hard  and  fast  any  one  of  'em  might  have  crushed  me 
like  a,  like  a — "     He  fumbled  for  a  word. 

*'Egg  shell,"  suggested  the  Headmaster. 

"Like  a  tgg  shell,"  assented  Gawaine,  and  he  said  it 
iiiany  times.  All  through  the  evening  meal  people  who 
sat  near  him  heard  him  muttering,  "Like  a  tgg  shell, 
like  a  tgg  shell." 

The  next  day  wal  clear,  but  Gawaine  did  not  get  up 
at  dawn.  Indeed,  it  was  almost  noon  when  the  Head- 
master found  him  cowering  in  bed,  with  the  clothes 
pulled  over  his  head.  The  principal  called  the  Assist- 
ant Professor  of  Pleasaunce,  and  together  they  dragged 
the  boy  toward  the  forest. 

"He'll  be  all  right  as  soon  as  he  gets  a  couple  more 
dragons  under  his  belt,"  explained  the  Headmaster. 

"The  Assistant  Professor  of  Pleasaunce  agreed.  "It 
would  be  a  shame  to  stop  such  a  fine  run,"  he  said. 
"Why,  counting  that  one  yesterday,  he's  killed  fifty 
dragons." 

They  pushed  the  boy  into  a  thicket  above  which 
hung  a  meager  cloud  of  steam.    It  was  obviously  quite 


The  Fifty 'first  Dragon  173 

a  small  dragon.  But  Gawaine  did  not  come  back  that 
night  or  the  next.  In  fact,  he  never  came  back.  Some 
weeks  afterward  brave  spirits  from  the  school  explored 
the  thicket,  but  they  could  find  nothing  to  remind  them 
of  Gawaine  except  the  metal  parts  of  his  medals.  Even 
the  ribbons  had  been  devoured. 

The  Headmaster  and  the  Assistant  Professor  of 
Pleasaunce  agreed  that  it  would  be  just  as  well  not  to 
tell  the  school  how  Gawaine  had  achieved  his  record 
and  still  less  how  he  came  to  die.  They  held  that  it 
might  have  a  bad  effect  on  school  spirit.  Accordingly, 
Gawaine  has  lived  in  the  memory  of  the  school  as  its 
greatest  hero.  No  visitor  succeeds  in  leaving  the  build- 
ing to-day  without  seeing  a  great  shield  which  hangs 
on  the  wall  of  the  dining  hall.  Fifty  pairs  of  dragons* 
ears  are  mounted  upon  the  shield  and  underneath  in 
gilt  letters  is  "Gawaine  le  Coeur-Hardy,"  followed  by 
the  simple  inscription,  "He  killed  fifty  dragons."  The 
record  has  never  been  equaled. 


SOME  HISTORIANS 
By  Philip  Guedalla 

Philip  Guedalla,  born  1889,  is  a  London  barrister  and  at  the 
present  time  an  Independent  Liberal  candidate  for  the  House 
of  Commons.  He  has  written  excellent  light  verse  and  parodies, 
and  a  textbook  on  European  history,  1715-1815.  His  most  con- 
spicuous achievement  so  far  is  the  brilliant  volume  Supers  and 
Supermen,  from  which  ray  selection  is  taken. 

Supers  and  Supermen  is  a  collection  of  historical  and  political 
portraits  and  skits.  It  is  mercilessly^  and  gloriously  humorous. 
Those  who  can  always  follow  the  wit  and  irony  that  Guedalla 
knows  how  to  conceal  in  a  cunningly  turned  phrase,  will  find 
the  book  a  prodigious  delight.  He  has  an  unerring  eye  for 
the  absurd;  his  paradoxes,  when  pondered,  have  a  way  of  prov- 
ing excellent  truth.  (Truth  is  sometimes  like  the  furniture  in 
Through  the  Looking  Glass,  which  could  only  be  reached  by 
resolutely  walking  away  from  it.)  ^ 

Ten  years  ago  Mr.  Guedalla  was  considered  the  most  continu- 
ously and  insolently  brilliant  undergraduate  of  the  Oxford  of 
that  day.  The  charm  and  vigor  of  his  ironical  wit  have  not 
lessened  since  his  fellow-undergraduates  strove  to  convince  them- 
selves that  no  man  could  be  as  clever  as  "P.  G."  seemed  to  be. 
When  Mr.  Guedalla  "holds  the  mirror  up  to  Nietzsche"  or  ''gives 
thanks  that  Britons  never  never  will  be  Slavs,"  or  dynasticizes 
Henry  James  into  three  reigns :  "James  I,  James  II,  and  the  Old 
Pretender;"  or  wlien  he  speaks  of  "the  cheerful  clatter  of  Sir 
James  Barrie's  cans  as  he  went  round  with  the  milk  of  human 
kindness,"  there  will  be  some  who  will  sigh ;  but  there  will  also 
(I  hope)  be  many  who  will  forgive  the  bravado  for  the  quick- 
silver wit. 

It  was  Quintillian  or  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  who  said, 
''History  repeats  itself:  historians  repeat  each  other.*' 
The  saying  is  full  of  the  mellow  wisdom  of  either 
writer,  and  stamped  with  the  peculiar  veracity  of  the 
Silver  Age  of  Roman  or  British  epigram.  One  might 
have  added,  if  the  aphorist  had  stayed  for  an  answer, 

174 


Some  Historians  17 5 

that  history  is  rather  interesting  when  it  repeats  itself : 
historians  are  not.  In  France,  which  is  an  enhghtened 
country  enjoying  the  benefits  of  the  Revolution  and  a 
public  examination  in  rhetoric,  historians  are  expected 
to  write  in  a  single  and  classical  style  of  French.  The 
result  is  sometimes  a  rather  irritating  uniformity;  it 
is  one  long  Taine  that  has  no  turning,  and  any  quota- 
tion may  be  attributed  with  safety  to  Guizot,  because 
la  nuit  tous  les  chats  sent  gris.  But  in  England,  which 
is  a  free  country,  the  restrictions  natural  to  ignorant 
(and  immoral)  foreigners  are  put  off  by  the  rough 
island  race,  and  history  is  written  in  a  dialect  which 
is  not  curable  by  education,  and  cannt)t  (it  would 
seem)  be  prevented  by  injunction. 

Historians'  English  is  not  a  style;  it  is  an  indus- 
trial disease.  The  thing  is  probably  scheduled  in  the 
Workmen's  Compensation  Act,  and  the  publisher  may 
be  required  upon  notice  of  the  attack  to  make  a  suit- 
able payment  to  the  writer's  dependants.  The  work- 
ers in  this  dangerous  trade  are  required  to  adopt  (like 
Mahomet's  coffin)  a  detached  standpoint — that  is,  to 
write  as  if  they  took  no  interest  in  the  subject.  Since 
it  is  not  considered  good  form  for  a  graduate  of  less 
than  sixty  years'  standing  to  write  upon  any  period  that 
is  either  familiar  or  interesting,  this  feeling  is  easily 
acquired,  and  the  resulting  narrations  present  the  dreary 
impartiality  of  the  Recording  Angel  without  that  com- 


176  Philip  Guedalla 

pleteness  which  is  the  sole  attraction  of  his  style. 
Wilde  complained  of  Mr.  Hall  Caine  that  he  wrote 
at  the  top  of  his  voice ;  but  a  modern  historian,  when 
he  is  really  detached,  writes  like  some  one  talking  in 
the  next  room,  and  few  writers  have  equaled  the  legal 
precision  of  Coxe's  observation  that  the  Turks  "sawed 
the  Archbishop  and  the  Commandant  in  half,  and 
committed  other  grave  violations  of  international 
law." 

Having  purged  his  mind  of  all  unsteadying  interest 
in  the  subject,  the  young  historian  should  adopt  a 
moral  code  of  more  than  Malthusian  severity,  which 
may  be  learned  from  any  American  writer  of  the  last 
century  upon  the  Renaissance  or  the  decadence  of 
Spain.  This  manner,  which  is  especially  necessary  "in 
passages  dealing  with  character,  will  lend  to  his  work 
the  grave  dignity  that  is  requisite  for  translation  into 
Latin  prose,  that  supreme  test  of  an  historian's  style. 
It  will  be  his  misfortune  to  meet  upon  the  byways 
of  history  the  oddest  and  most  abnormal  persons,  and 
he  should  keep  by  him  (unless  he  wishes  to  forfeit  his 
Fellowship)  some  convenient  formula  by  which  he 
may  indicate  at  once  the  enormity  of  the  subject  and 
the  disapproval  of  the  writer.  The  writings  of  Lord 
Macaulay  will  furnish  him  at  need  with  the  necessar}' 
facility  in  lightning  characterization.  It  was  the  prac- 
tice of  Cicero  to  label  his  contemporaries  without  dis- 


Some  Historians  ^77 

tinction  as  ''heavy  men,"  and  the  characters  of  history 
are  easily  divisible  into  ''far-seeing  statesmen"  and 
"reckless  libertines."  It  may  be  objected  that  al- 
though it  is  sufficient  for  the  purposes  of  contemporary 
caricature  to  represent  Mr.  Gladstone  as  a  collar  or 
Mr.  Chamberlain  as  an  eye-glass,  it  is  an  inadequate 
record  for  posterity.  But  it  is  impossible  for  a  busy 
man  to  write  history  without  formulae,  and  after  all 
sheep  are  sheep  and  goats  are  goats.  Lord  Macaulay 
once  wrote  of  some  one,  "In  private  life  he  was  stern, 
morose,  and  inexorable";  he  was  probably  a  Dutch- 
man. It  is  a  passage  which  has  served  as  a  lasting 
model  for  the  historian's  treatment  of  character.  I 
had  always  imagined  that  Cliche  was  a  suburb  of  Paris, 
until  I  discovered  it  to  be  a  street  in  Oxford.  Thus, 
if  the  working  historian  is  faced  with  a  period  of  "de- 
plorable excesses,"  he  handles  it  like  a  man,  and  writes 
always  as  if  he  was  illustrated  with  steel  engravings: 

The  imbecile  king  now  ripened  rapidly  towards 
a  crisis.  Surrounded  by  a  Court  in  which  the 
inanity  of  the  day  was  rivaled  only  by  the  de- 
bauchery of  the  night,  he  became  incapable  to- 
wards the  year  1472  of  distinguishing  good  from 
evil,  a  fact  which  contributed  considerably  to  the 
effectiveness  of  his  foreign  policy,  but  was  hardly 
calculated  to  conform  with  the  monastic  tradi- 


178  Philip  Guedalla 

tions  of  his  House.  Long  nights  of  drink  and 
dicing  weakened  a  constitution  that  was  already 
undermined,  and  the  council-table,  where  once 
Campo  Santa  had  presided,  was  disfigured  with 
the  despicable  apparatus  of  Bagatelle.  The 
burghers  of  the  capital  were  horrified  by  the  wild 
laughter  of  his  madcap  courtiers,  and  when  it 
was  reported  in  London  that  Ladislas  had  played 
at  Halma  the  Court  of  St.  James's  received  his 
envoy  in  the  deepest  of  ceremonial  mourning. 

That  is  precisely  how  it  is  done.  The  passage  ex- 
hibits the  benign  and  contemporary  influences  of  Lord 
Macaulay  and  Mr.  Bowdler,  and  it  contains  all  the 
necessary  ingredients,  except  perhaps  a  "venal  Chan- 
cellor" and  a  "greedy  mistress."  Vice  is  a  subject  of 
especial  interest  to  historians,  who  are  in  most  cases 
residents  in  small  county  towns;  and  there  is  un- 
bounded  truth  in  the  rococo  footnote  of  a  writer  on 
the  Renaissance,  who  said  a  propos  of  a  Pope :  "The 
disgusting  details  of  his  vices  smack  somewhat  of  the 
morbid  historian's  lamp."  The  note  itself  is  a  fine 
example  of  that  concrete  visualization  of  the  subject 
which  led  Macaulay  to  observe  that  in  consequence  of 
Frederick's  invasion  of  Silesia  "black  men  fought  on 
the  coast  of  Coromandel  and  red  men  scalped  each 
pther  by  the  Great  Lakes  of  North  America." 


Some  Historians  ^79 

A  less  exciting  branch  of  the  historian's  work  is  the 
reproduction  of  contemporary  sayings  and  speeches. 
Thus,  an  obituary  should  always  close  on  a  note  of 
regretful  quotation : 

He  lived  in  affluence  and  died  in  great  pain. 
"Thus,"  it  was  said  by  the  most  eloquent  of  his 
contemporaries,  "thus  terminated  a  career  as  va- 
ried as  it  was  eventful,  as  strange  as  it  was 
unique." 

But  for  the  longer  efforts  of  sustained  eloquence 
greater  art  is  required.  It  is  no  longer  usual,  as  in 
Thucydides'  day,  to  compose  completely  new  speeches, 
but  it  is  permissible  for  the  historian  to  heighten  the 
colors  and  even  to  insert  those  rhetorical  questicwis 
and  complexes  of  personal  pronouns  which  will  render 
the  translation  of  the  passage  into  Latin  prose  a  work 
of  consuming  interest  and  lasting  profit: 

The  Duke  assembled  his  companions  for  the 
forlorn  hope,  and  addressed  them  briefly  in 
oratio  ohliqua.  "His  father,"  he  said,  "had  al- 
ways cherished  in  his  heart  the  idea  that  he  would 
one  day  return  to  his  own  people.  Had  he  fallen 
in  vain  ?  Was  it  for  nothing  that  they  had  dyed 
with  their  loyal  blood  the  soil  of  a  hundred  bat- 
tlefields?   The  past  was  dead,  the  future  was  yet 


i8o  Philip  Guedalla 

to  come.  Let  them  remember  that  great  sacrifices 
were  necessary  for  the  attainment  of  great  ends, 
let  them  think  of  their  homes  and  families,  and 
if  they  had  any  pity  for  ^n  exile,  an  outcast,  and 
an  orphan,  let  them  die  fighting." 

That  is  the  kind  of  passage  that  used  to  send  the 
blood  of  Dr.  Bradley  coursing  more  quickly  through 
his  veins.  The  march  of  its  eloquence,  the  solemnity 
of  its  sentiment,  and  the  rich  balance  of  its  pronouns 
unite  to  make  it  a  model  for  all  historians :  it  can  be 
adapted  for  any  period. 

It  is  not  possible  in  a  short  review  to  include  the 
special  branches  of  the  subject.  Such  are  those  effi- 
cient modern  text-books,  in  which  events  are  referred 
to  either  as  "factors"  (as  if  they  were  a  sum)  or  as 
"phases"  (as  if  they  were  the  moon).  There  is  also 
the  solemn  business  of  writing  economic  history,  in 
which  the  historian  may  lapse  at  will  into  algebra, 
and  anything  not  otherwise  describable  may  be  called 
"social  tissue."  A  special  subject  is  constituted  by  th6 
early  conquests  of  Southern  and  Central  America;  in 
these  there  is  a  uniform  opening  for  all  passages  run- 
ning: 

It  was  now  the  middle  of  October,  and  the 
season  was  drawing  to  an  end.  Soon  the  moun- 
tains would  be  whitened  with  the  snows  of  winter 


Some  Historians  i8l 

and  every  rivulet  swollen  to  a  roaring  torrent 
Cortez,  whose  determination  only  increased  with 
misfortune,  decided  to  delay  his  march  until  the 
inclemency  of  the  season  abated.  ...  It  was  now 
the  middle  of  November,  and  the  season  was 
drawing  to  an  end.  ... 

There  is,  finally,  the  method  of  military  history. 
This  may  be  patriotic,  technical,  or  in  the  manner 
prophetically  indicated  by  Virgil  as  Belloc,  horrida 
Belloc.  The  finest  exponent  of  the  patriotic  style  is 
undoubtedly  the  Rev.  W.  H.  Fitchett,  a  distinguished 
colonial  clergyman  and  historian  of  the  Napoleonic 
wars.  His  night-attacks  are  more  nocturnal,  and  his 
scaling  parties  are  more  heroically  scaligerous  than 
those  of  any  other  writer.  His  drummer-boys  are  the 
most  moving  in  my  limited  circle  of  drummer-boys. 
One  gathers  that  the  Peninsular  War  was  full  of  pleas- 
ing incidents  of  this  type : 

The  Night  Attack 
It  was  midnight  when  Staflf- Surgeon  Pettigrew 
showed  the  flare  from  the  summit  of  Sombrero. 
At  once  the  whole  plain  was  alive  with  the  hum 
of  the  great  assault.  The  four  columns  speedily 
got  into  position  with  fiares  and  bugles  at  the 
head  of  each.    One  made  straight  for  the  Water- 


182  Philip  Guedalla 

gate,  a  second  for  the  Bailey-guard,  a  third  for 
the  Porter-house,  and  the  last  (led  by  the  saintly 
Smeathe)  for  the  Tube  station.  Let  us  follow 
the  second  column  on  its  secret  mission  through 
the  night,  lit  by  torches  and  cheered  on  by  the 

huzzas  of  a  thousand  English  throats.    ** the 

s,"  cried  Cocker  in  a  voice  hoarse  with  patri- 
otism ;  at  that  moment  a  red-hot  shot  hurtled  over 
the  plain  and,  ricocheting  treacherously  from  the 
frozen  river,  dashed  the  heroic  leader  to  the 
ground.  Captain  Boffskin,  of  the  Buffs,  leapt  up 
with  the  dry  coughing  howl  of  the  British  in- 
fantryman,   " them,"  he  roared,  *' them 

to ";  and  for  the  last  fifty  yards  it  was  neck 

and  neck  with  the  ladders.  Our  gallant  drummer- 
boys  laid  to  again,  but  suddenly  a  shot  rang  out 
from  the  silent  ramparts.  The  94th  Leger  were 
awake.    We  were  discovered ! 

The  war  of  1870  requires  more  special  treatment. 
Its  histories  show  no  particular  characteristic,  but  its 
appearance  in  fiction  deserves  special  attention.  There 
is  a  standard  pattern. 

How  THE  Prussians  Came  to  Guitry-le-sec 
It  was  a  late  afternoon  in  early  September,  or  an 
early  afternoon  in  late  September — I  forget  these 


Some  Historians  183 

things — when  I  missed  the  boat  express  from 
Kerplouarnec  to  Pouzy-le-roi  and  was  forced  by 
the  time-table  to  spend  three  hours  at  the  for- 
gotten hamlet  of  Guitry-le-sec,  in  the  heart  of 
Dauphine.  It  contained  besides  a  quantity  of  un- 
derfed poultry  one  white  church,  one  white  mairie, 
and  nine  white  houses.  An  old  man  with  a  white 
beard  came  towards  me  up  the  long  white  road. 
"It  was  on  just  such  an  afternoon  as  this  forty 
years  ago,"  he  began,  "that  .  .  ." 

"Stop  !'*  I  said  sharply.  "I  have  met  you  in  a 
previous  existence.  You  are  going  to  say  that  a 
solitary  Uhlan  appeared  sharply  outlined  against 
the  sky  behind  M.  Jules'  farm."  He  nodded 
feebly. 

"The  red  trousers  had  left  the  village  half  an 
hour  before  to  look  for  the  hated  Prussian  in 
the  cafes  of  the  neighboring  town.  You  were 
alone  when  the  spiked  helmets  marched  in.  You 
can  hear  their  shrieking  fifes  to  this  day."  He 
wept  quietly. 

I  went  on.  "There  was  an  officer  with  them,  a 
proud,  ugly  man  with  a  butter-colored  mustache. 
He  saw  the  little  Mimi  and  drove  his  coarse  Sua- 
bian  hand  upward  through  his  Mecklenburger 
mustache.  You  dropped  on  one  knee.  .  .  ." 
But  he  had  fled. 


l84  Philip  Guedalla 

In  the  first  of  the  three  cafes  I  saw  a  second 
old  man.  "Come  in,  Monsieur,"  he  said.  I 
waited  on  the  doorstep.  "It  was  on  just  such  an 
afternoon.  .  .  .'*  I  went  on.  At  the  other  two 
cafes  two  further  old  men  attempted  me  with 
the  story;  I  told  the  last  that  he  was  rescued  by 
Zouaves,  and  walked  happily  to  the  station,  to 
read  about  Vichy  Celestins  until  the  train  came 
in  from  the  south. 

The  Russo-Japanese  War  is  a  more  original  subject 
and  derives  its  particular  flavor  from  the  airy  grace 
with  which  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  has  described  it.  Like 
this : 

Wag-wag,  Jan.  31. — The  rafale  was  purring 
like  a  mistral  as  I  shaved  this  morning.    I  wonder 

where  it  is;  must  ask .    is  a  charming 

fellow  with  the  face  of  a  Baluchi  Kashgai  and  a 
voice  like  a  circular  saw. 

1 1  .-40 — It  was  eleven-forty  when  I  looked  at 
my  watch.  The  shrapnel -bursts  look  like  a  plan- 
tation of  powder-puflfs  suspended  in  the  sky. 
Victor  says  there  is  a  battle  going  on :  capital  chap 
Victor. 

2  p.  M. — Lunched  with  an  American  lady-doc- 
tor.   How  feminine  the  Americans  can  be. 


Some  Historians  185 

7  p.  M. — A  great  day.  It  was  Donkelsdorp  over 
again.  Substitute  the  Tenth  Army  for  the  Traf- 
fordshire's  baggage  wagon,  swell  Honks  Spruit 
into  the  roaring  Wang-ho,  elevate  Oom  Kop  into 
the  frowning  scarp  of  Pyjiyama,  and  you  have  it. 
The  Staff  were  obviously  gratified  when  I  told 
them  about  Donkelsdorp. 

The  Rooskis  came  over  the  crest-line  in  a  huddle 
of  massed  battalions,  and  Gazeka  was  after  them 
like  a  rat  after  a  terrier.  I  knew  that  his  horse- 
guns  had  no  horses  (a  rule  of  the  Japanese  service 
to  discourage  unnecessary  changing  of  ground), 
but  his  men  bit  the  trails  and  dragged  them  up  by 
their  teeth.  Slowly  the  Muscovites  peeled  off  the 
steaming  mountain  and  took  the  funicular  down 
the  other  side. 

I  wonder  what  my  friend  Smuts  would  make 
of  the  Yen-tai  coal  mine?  Well,  well. — "Some^ 
thing  accomplished,  something  done." 

The  technical  manner  is  more  difficult  of  acquisition 
for  the  beginner,  since  it  involves  a  knowledge  of  at 
least  two  European  languages.  It  is  cardinal  rule 
that  all  places  should  be  described  as  points  d'appui, 
the  simple  process  of  scouting  looks  far  better  as 
Verschleierimg,  and  the  adjective  "strategicaF*  may  be 
used  without  any  meaning  in  front  of  any  noun. 


1 86  Philip  Guedalla 

But  the  military  manner  was  revolutionized  by  the 
war.  Mr.  Belloc  created  a  new  Land  and  a  new 
Water.  We  know  now  why  the  Persian  commanders 
demanded  "earth  and  water"  on  their  entrance  into  a 
Greek  town;  it  was  the  weekly  demand  of  the  Great 
General  Staff,  as  it  called  for  its  favorite  paper.  Mr. 
Belloc  has  woven  Baedeker  and  geometry  into  a  new 
style :  it  is  the  last  cry  of  historians'  English,  because 
one  was  invented  by  a  German  and  the  other  by  a 
Greek. 


SAMUEL  BUTLER:  DIOGENES  OF  THE 
VICTORIANS 

By  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

Professor  Sherman's  cold  compress,  applied  to  the  Butler  cult, 

caused  much  suffering  in  some  regions,  where  it  was  said  to  be 
more  than  a  cooling  bandage — in  fact,  a  wet  blanket.  In  the 
general  rough-and-tumble  among  critical  standards  during  recent 
years,  Mr.  Sherman  is  one  of  those  who  have  dealt  some  swing- 
ing blows  in  favor  of  the  Victorians  and  the  literary  Old  Guard 
— which  was  often  square  but  rarely  hollow. 

Stuart  Pratt  Sherman,  born  in  Iowa  in  1881,  graduated  from 
Williams  in  1903,  has  been  since  191 1  professor  of  English 
at  the  University  of  Illinois.  His  own  account  of  his  adven- 
tures, written  without  intended  publication,  is  worth  considera- 
tion.    He  says : 

"My  life  hasn't  been  quite  as  dryly  'academic,*  nor  as  simply 
'middle-Western,'  as  the  record  indicates.  For  example:  I 
lived  in  Los  Angeles  from  my  5th  to  my  13th  year,  and 
then  went  on  a  seven  months'  adventure  in  gold  mining 
in  the  Black  Canon  of  Arizona,  where  I  had  some  experi- 
ence with  drouth  in  the  desert,  etc.    That  is  not  'literary.* 

"Recently,  I've  been  thinking  I  might  write  a  little  pa- 
per about  some  college  friends  at  Williams.  I  was  in 
college  with  Harry  James  Smith  (author  of  Mrs.  Bump- 
stead  Lee),  Max  Eastman,  and  'Go-to-Hell'  Whittlesey. 
As  editor  of  the  Williams  Monthly  I  have  accepted  and 
rejected  manuscripts  of  both  the  two  latter,  and  have 
reminiscences    of    their   literary   youth. 

"Then  I  spent  a  summer  in  the  Post  and  Nation  in  1908, 
which  is  a  pleasant  chapter  to  remember ;  another  summer 
teaching  at  Columbia ;  this  past  summer  teaching  at  the 
University  of  California.  My  favorite  recreations  are 
climbing  little  mountains,  chopping  wood,  and  canoeing  on 
Lake  Michigan. 

"This  summer  I  have  been  picking  out  a  place  to  die 
in — or  rather  looking  over  the  sites  offered  in  California. 
I  lean  towards  the  high  Sierras,  up  above  the  Yosemite 
Valley. 

"My  ambition  in  life  is  to  retire — perhaps  at  the  age 
of  seventy — and  write  only  for  amusement.  When  I  can 
abandon  the  task  of  improving  my  contemporaries,  I  hope 
to  become  a  popular  author." 

187 


1 88  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

Professor  Sherman,  you  will  note,  is  almost  an  exact  con- 
temporary of  H.  L.  Mencken,  with  whom  he  has  crossed  swords 
in  more  than  one  spirited  encounter ;  and  Sherman  is  likely  to 
give  as  good  as  he  takes  in  such  scuffles,  or  even  rather  better. 
It  is  high  time  that  his  critical  sagacity  and  powerful  reasoning 
were  better  known  in  the  market-place. 

Until  I  met  the  Butlerians  I  used  to  think  that  the 
religious  spirit  in  our  times  was  very  precious,  there 
was  so  little  of  it.  I  thought  one  should  hold  one's 
breath  before  it  as  before  the  flicker  of  one's  last 
match  on  a  cold  night  in  the  woods.  "What  if  it 
should  go  out?"  I  said;  but  my  apprehension  was 
groundless.  It  can  never  go  out.  The  religious  spirit 
is  indestructible  and  constant  in  quantity  like  the  sum 
of  universal  energ}^  in  which  matches  and  suns  are  alike 
but  momentary  sparkles  and  phases.  This  great  truth 
I  learned  of  the  Butlerians:  Though  the  forms  and 
objects  of  religious  belief  wax  old  as  a  garment  and 
are  changed,  faith,  which  is,  after  all,  the  precious 
thing,  endures  forever.  Destroy  a  man's  faith  in  God 
and  he  will  worship  humanity;  destroy  his  faith  in 
humanity  and  he  will  worship  science;  destroy  his 
faith  in  science  and  he  will  worship  himself;  destroy 
his  faith  in  himself  and  he  will  worship  Samuel  Butler. 

What  makes  the  Butlerian  cult  so  impressive  is,  of 
course,  that  Butler,  poor  dear,  as  the  English  say,  was 
the  least  worshipful  of  men.  He  was  not  even — till 
his  posthumous  disciples  made  him  so — ^a  person  of 
any   particular   importance.     One  writing  a   private 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  189 

memorandum  of  his  death  might  have  produced  some- 
thing Hke  this:  Samuel  Butler  was  an  unsociable, 
burry,  crotchety,  obstinate  old  bachelor,  a  dilettante 
in  art  and  science,  an  unsuccessful  author,  a  witty 
cynic  of  inquisitive  temper  and,  comprehensively  speak- 
ing, the  unregarded  Diogenes  of  the  Victorians.  Son 
of  a  clergyman  and  grandson  of  a  bishop,  born  in  1835, 
educated  at  Cambridge,  he  began  to  prepare  for  ordina- 
tion. But,  as  we  are  told,  because  of  scruples  regard- 
ing infant  baptism  he  abandoned  the  prospect  of  holy 
orders  and  in  1859  sailed  for  New  Zealand,  where  with 
capital  supplied  by  his  father  he  engaged  in  sheep- 
farming  for  five  years.  In  1864,  returning  to  England 
with  £8,000,  he  established  himself  for  life  at  Clifford's 
Inn,  London.  He  devoted  some  years  to  painting, 
adored  Handel  and  dabbled  in  music,  made  occasional 
trips  to  Sicily  and  Italy,  and  wrote  a  dozen  books, 
which  generally  fell  dead  from  the  press,  on  religion, 
literature,  art  and  scientific  theory.  "Erewhon,"  how- 
ever, a  Utopian  romance  published  in  1872,  had  by 
1899  sold  between  three  and  four  thousand  copies. 
Butler  made  few  friends  and  apparently  never  mar- 
ried. He  died  in  1902.  His  last  words  were :  ''Have 
you  brought  the  cheque  book,  Alfred?"  His  body  was 
cremated  and  the  ashes  were  buried  in  a  garden  by 
his  biographer  and  his  man-servant,  with  nothing  to 
mark  the  spot. 


190  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

Butler's  indifference  to  the  disposal  of  his  earthly 
part  betokens  no  contempt  for  fame.  Denied  contem- 
porary renown,  he  had  firmly  set  his  heart  on  immor- 
tality, and  quietly,  persistently,  cannily  provided  for 
it.  If  he  could  not  go  down  to  posterity  by  the  suf- 
frage of  his  countrymen,  he  would  go  down  by  the 
shrewd  use  of  his  cheque  book;  he  would  buy  his  way 
in.  He  bought  the  publication  of  most  of  the  books 
produced  in  his  lifetime.  He  diligently  prepared  man- 
uscripts for  posthumous  publication  and  accumulated 
and  arranged  great  masses  of  materials  for  a  biog- 
rapher. He  insured  an  interest  in  his  literary  remains 
by  bequeathing  them  and  all  his  copyrights  to  his  liter- 
ary executor,  R.  A.  Streatfeild.  He  purchased  an  in- 
terest in  a  biographer  by  persuading  Henry  Festing 
Jones,  a  feckless  lawyer  of  Butlerian  proclivities,  to 
abandon  the  law  and  become  his  musical  and  literary 
companion.  In  return  for  these  services  Mr.  Jones 
received  between  1887  and  1900  an  allowance  of  £200 
a  year,  and  at  Butler's  death  a  bequest  of  £500,  the 
musical  copyrights  and  the  manifest  responsibility  and 
privilege  of  assisting  Streatfeild  with  the  propagation 
of  Butler's  fame,  together  with  their  own,  in  the  next 
generation. 

These  good  and  faithful  servants  performed  their 
duties  with  exemplary  zeal  and  astuteness.  In  1903, 
the  year  following  the  Master's  death,  Streatfeild  pub- 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  191 

lished  "The  Way  of  All  Flesh,"  a  book  packed  with 
satirical  wit,  the  first  since  "Erewhon"  which  was  cap- 
able of  walking  off  on  its  own  legs  and  exciting  gen- 
eral curiosity  about  its  author — curiosity  intensified  by 
the  announcement  that  the  novel  had  been  written  be- 
tween 1872  and  1884.  In  the  wake  of  this  sensation 
there  began  the  systematic  annual  relaunching  of  old 
works,  with  fresh  introductions  and  memoirs  and  a 
piecemeal  feeding  out  of  other  literary  remains,  cul- 
minating in  19 1 7  with  the  publication  of  "The  Note- 
Books,"  a  skilful  collection  and  condensation  of  the 
whole  of  Butler's  intellectual  life.  Meanwhile,  in  1908, 
the  Erewhon  dinner  had  been  instituted.  In  spite  of 
mild  deprecation,  this  feast,  with  its  two  toasts  to  his 
Majesty  and  to  the  memory  of  Samuel  Butler,  assumed 
from  the  outset  the  aspect  of  a  solemn  sacrament  of 
believers.  Among  these  was  conspicuous  on  the  sec- 
ond occasion  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw,  not  quite 
certain,  perhaps,  whether  he  had  come  to  give  or  to 
receive  honor,  whether  he  was  himself  to  be  regarded 
as  the  beloved  disciple  or  rather  as  the  one  for  whom 
Butler,  preaching  in  the  Victorian  wilderness,  had 
prepared  the  way  with  "free  and  future-piercing  sug- 
gestions." 

By  19 14  Streatfeild  was  able  to  declare  that  no  frag- 
ment of  Butler's  was  too  insignificant  to  publish.  In 
191 5  and  1916  appeared  extensive  critical  studies  by 


192  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

Gilbert  Cannan  and  John  F.  Harris.  In  19 19  at  last 
arrives  Henry  Festing  Jones  with  the  authoritative 
memoir  in  two  enormous  volumes  with  portraits,  docu- 
ments, sumptuous  index,  elaborate  bibliography  and  a 
pious  accounting  to  the  public  for  the  original  manu- 
scripts, which  have  been  deposited  like  sacred  relics  at 
St.  John's  College,  the  Bodleian,  the  British  Museum, 
the  Library  of  Congress  and  at  various  shrines  in  Italy 
and  Sicily.  Here  are  materials  for  a  fresh  considera- 
tion of  the  man  in  relation  to  his  work. 

The  unconverted  will  say  that  such  a  monument  to 
such  a  man  is  absurdly  disproportionate.  But  Butler 
is  now  more  than  a  man.  He  is  a  spiritual  ancestor, 
leader  of  a  movement,  moulder  of  young  minds, 
founder  of  a  faith.  His  monument  is  designed  not 
merely  to  preserve  his  memory  but  to  mark  as  well  the 
present  importance  of  the  Butlerian  sect.  The  memoir 
appears  to  have  been  written  primarily  for  them.  The 
faithful  will  no  doubt  find  it  delicious;  and  I,  though 
an  outsider,  got  through  it  without  fatigue  and  with  a 
kind  of  perverse  pleasure  in  its  perversity. 

It  is  very  instructive,  but  it  by  no  means  simplifies 
its  puzzling  and  complex  subject.  Mr.  Jones  is  not 
of  the  biographers  who  look  into  the  heart  of  a  man, 
reduce  him  to  a  formula  and  recreate  him  in  accord- 
ance with  it.  He  works  from  the  outside,  inward,  and 
gradually  achieves  life  and  reality  by  an  immense  ac- 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  193 

cumulation  of  objective  detail,  without  ever  plucking 
out,  or  even  plucking  at,  the  heart  of  the  mystery. 
What  was  the  man's  "master  passion"  and  his  master 
faculty?  Butler  himself  did  not  know;  consequently 
he  could  not  always  distinguish  his  wisdom  from  his 
folly.  He  was  an  ironist  entangled  in  his  own  net  and 
an  egotist  bitten  with  self-distrust,  concealing  his 
wounds  in  self-assertion  and  his  hesitancies  in  an  ex- 
ternal aggressiveness.  Mr.  Jones  pierces  the  shell  here 
and  there,  but  never  removes  it.  Considering  his  op- 
portunities, he  is  sparing  in  composed  studies  of  his 
subject  based  on  his  own  direct  observation ;  and,  with 
all  his  ingenuousness  and  his  shocking  but  illuminating 
indiscretions,  he  is  frequently  silent  as  a  tomb  where 
he  must  certainly  possess  information  for  which  every 
reader  will  inquire,  particularly  those  readers  who  do 
not,  like  the  Butlerians,  accept  Samuel  Butler  as  the 
happy  reincarnation  of  moderation,  common  sense  and 
fearless  honesty. 

The  whole  case  of  the  Georgians  against  the  Vic- 
torians might  be  fought  out  over  his  life  and  works; 
and  indeed  there  has  already  been  many  a  skirmish  in 
that  quarter.  For,  of  course,  neither  Streatfeild  nor 
Mr.  Jones  is  ultimately  responsible  for  his  revival. 
Ultimately  Butler's  vogue  is  due  to  the  fact  that  he  is  a 
friend  of  the  Georgian  revolution  against  idealism  in 
the  very  citadel  of  the  enemy;  the  extraordinary  ac- 


194  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

claim  with  which  he  is  now  received  is  his  reward 
for  having  long  ago  prepared  to  betray  the  Victorians 
into  the  hands  of  a  ruthless  posterity.  He  was  a  traitor 
to  his  own  times,  and  therefore  it  follows  that  he  was 
a  man  profoundly  disillusioned.  The  question  which 
we  may  all  reasonably  raise  with  regard  to  a  traitor 
whom  we  have  received  within  our  lines  is  whether  he 
will  make  us  a  good  citizen.  We  should  like  to  know 
pretty  thoroughly  how  he  fell  out  with  his  countrymen 
— whether  through  defects  in  his  own  temper  and 
character  or  through  a  clear-eyed  and  righteous  indig- 
nation with  the  incorrigible  viciousness  of  their  man- 
ners and  institutions.  We  should  like  to  know  what 
vision  of  reformation  succeeded  his  disillusion.  Hith- 
erto the  Georgians  have  been  more  eloquent  in  their 
disillusions  than  in  their  visions,  and  have  inclined 
to  welcome  Butler  as  a  dissolving  agent  without  much 
inspecting  his  solution. 

The  Butlerians  admire  Butler  for  his  withering  at- 
tack on  family  life,  notably  in  "The  Way  of  All  Flesh" ; 
and  many  a  studious  literary  man  with  a  talkative  wife 
and  eight  romping  children  would,  of  course,  admit 
an  occasional  flash  of  romantic  envy  for  Butler's  bach- 
elor apartments.  Mr.  Jones  tells  us  that  Theobald  and 
Christina  Pontifex,  whose  nakedness  Butler  uncovers, 
were  drawn  without  exaggeration  from  his  own  father 
and  mother.     His  work  on  them  is  a  masterpiece  of 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  195 

pitiless  satire.  Butler  appears  to  have  hated  his  father, 
despised  his  mother  and  loathed  his  sisters  in  all  truth 
and  sincerity.  He  nursed  his  vindictive  and  contemptu- 
ous feeHngs  towards  them  all  through  his  life;  he 
studied  these  feelings,  made  notes  on  them,  jested  out 
of  them,  lived  in  them,  reduced  them  to  a  philosophy 
of  domestic  antipathy. 

He  was  far  more  learned  than  any  other  English 
author  in  the  psychology  of  impiety.  When  he  heard 
some  one  say,  "Two  are  better  than  one,"  he  ex- 
claimed, "Yes,  but  the  man  who  said  that  did  not  know 
my  sisters."  When  he  was  forty-eight  years  old  he 
wrote  to  a  friend  that  his  father  was  in  poor  health 
and  not  likely  to  recover ;  "but  may  hang  on  for  months 
or  go  off  with  the  N.  E.  winds  which  w^e  are  sure  to 
have  later  on."  In  the  same  letter  he  writes  that  he 
is  going  to  strike  out  forty  weak  pages  in  "Erewhon" 
and  stick  in  forty  stronger  ones  on  the  "trial  of  a 
middle-aged  man  'for  not  having  lost  his  father  at  a 
suitable  age.' "  His  father's  one  unpardonable  offense 
was  not  dying  early  and  so  enlarging  his  son's  income. 
If  this  had  been  a  jest,  it  would  have  been  a  little 
coarse  for  a  deathbed.  But  Mr.  Jones,  who  appears 
to  think  it  very  amusing,  proves  clearly  enough  that 
it  was  not  a  jest,  but  an  obsession,  and  a  horrid  obses- 
sion it  was.  Now  a  man  who  attacks  the  family  be- 
cause his  father  does  not  die  as  promptly  as  could  be 


196  Stuart  P,  Sherman 

desired  is  not  likely  to  propose  a  happy  substitute: 
his  mood  is  not  reconstructive,  funny  though  it  may  be 
in  two  old  boys  of  fifty,  like  Butler  and  Jones,  living 
along  like  spoiled  children  on  allowances,  Butler  from 
his  father,  Jones  from  his  mother. 

The  Butlerians  admire  Butler  for  his  brilliant  at- 
tack on  "romantic"  relations  between  the  sexes.  Be- 
fore the  advent  of  Shaw  he  poured  poison  on  the  roots 
of  that  imaginative  love  in  which  all  normal  men  and 
maidens  walk  at  least  once  in  a  lifetime  as  in  a  rosy 
cloud  shot  through  with  golden  lights. 

His  portraits  show  a  man  of  vigorous  physique,  cap- 
able of  passion,  a  face  distinctly  virile,  rather  harshly 
bearded,  with  broad  masculine  eyebrows.  Was  he  ever 
in  love?  If  not,  why  was  he  not?  Elementary  ques- 
tions which  his  biographer  after  a  thousand  pages 
leaves  unanswered.  Mr.  Jones  asserts  that  both  Over- 
ton and  Ernest  in  "The  Way  of  All  Flesh"  are  in  the 
main  accurately  autobiographical,  and  he  furnishes 
much  evidence  for  the  point.  He  remarks  a  divergence 
in  this  fact,  that  Butler,  unlike  his  hero,  was  never  in 
prison.  Did  Butler,  like  his  hero,  have  children  and 
farm  them  out?  The  point  is  of  some  interest  in  the 
case  of  a  man  who  is  helping  us  to  destroy  the  conven- 
tional family. 

Mr.  Jones  leaves  quite  in  the  dark  his  relations  with 
such  women  as  the  late  Queen  Victoria  would  not 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  197 

have  approved,  relations  which  J.  B.  Yeats  has,  how- 
ever, pubhcly  discussed.  Mr.  Jones  is  ordinarily  cyn- 
ical enough,  candid  enough,  as  we  shall  see.  He  takes 
pains  to  tell  us  that  his  own  grandfather  was  never 
married.  He  does  not  hesitate  to  acknowledge  abun- 
dance of  moral  ugliness  in  his  subject.  Why  this  access 
of  Victorian  reticence  at  a  point  where  plain-speaking 
is  the  order  of  the  day  and  the  special  pride  of  con- 
temporary Erewhonians?  Why  did  a  young  man  of 
Butler^s  tastes  leave  the  church  and  go  into  exile  in 
New  Zealand  for  five  years?  Could  a  more  resolute 
biographer  perhaps  find  a  more  "realistic"  explana- 
tion than  difBculties  over  infant  baptism?  Mr.  Shaw 
told  his  publisher  that  Butler  was  "a  shy  old  bird." 
In  so^e  respects  he  was  also  a  sly  old  bird. 

Among  the  "future-piercing  suggestions"  extolled 
by  Mr.  Shaw  we  may  be  sure  that  the  author  of  "Man 
and  Superman"  was  pleased  to  acknowledge  Butler's 
prediscovery  that  woman  is  the  pursuer.  This  idea 
we  may  now  trace  quite  definitely  to  his  relations  with 
Miss  Savage,  a  witty,  sensible,  presumably  virtuous 
woman  of  about  his  own  age,  living  in  a  club  in  Lon- 
don, who  urged  hm  to  write  fiction,  read  all  his  manu- 
scripts, knitted  him  socks,  reviewed  his  books  in 
women's  magazines  and  corresponded  with  him  for 
years  till  she  died,  without  his  knowledge,  in  hospital 
from  cancer.     Her  letters  are  Mr.  Jones'  mainstay  in 


198  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

his  first  volume  and  she  is,  except  Butler  himself,  altCN 
gether  his  most  interesting  personality.  Mr.  Jones 
says  that  being  unable  to  find  any  one  who  could  au- 
thorize him  to  use  her  letters,  he  publishes  them  on 
his  own  responsibility.  But  he  adds,  "I  cannot  imag- 
ine that  any  relation  of  hers  who  may  read  her  let- 
ters will  experience  any  feelings  other  than  pride  and 
delight."  This  lady,  he  tells  us,  was  the  original  of 
Alethea  Pontifex.  But  he  marks  a'  difference.  Alethea 
was  handsome.  Miss  Savage,  he  says,  was  short,  fat, 
had  hip  disease,  and  "that  kind  of  dowdiness  which  I 
used  to  associate  with  ladies  who  had  been  at  school 
with  my  mother."  Butler  became  persuaded  that  Miss 
Savage  loved  him ;  this  bored  him ;  and  the  correspond- 
ence would  lapse  till  he  felt  the  need  of  her  cheery 
friendship  again.  On  one  occasion  she  wrote  to  him, 
"I  wish  that  you  did  not  know  wrong  from  right." 
Mr.  Jones  believes  that  she  was  alluding  to  his  scrupu- 
lousness in  matters  of  business.  Butler  himself  con- 
strued the  words  as  an  overture  to  which  he  was  in- 
disposed to  respond.  The  debate  on  this  point  and 
the  pretty  uncertainty  in  which  it  is  left  can  surely 
arouse  in  Miss  Savage's  relations  no  other  feelings 
than  "pride  and  delight." 

This  brings  us  to  the  Butlerian  substitute  for  the 
chivalry  which  used  to  be  practised  by  those  who  bore 
what  the  Victorians  called  "the  grand  old  name  of 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  199 

gentleman."  In  his  later  years,  after  the  death  of  Miss 
Savage,  in  periods  of  loneliness,  depression  and  ill- 
health,  Butler  made  notes  on  his  correspondence  re- 
proaching himself  for  his  ill-treatment  of  her.  "He 
also,"  says  his  biographer,  "tried  to  express  his  re- 
morse" in  two  sonnets  from  which  I  extract  some  lines : 

She  was  too  kind,  wooed  too  persistently, 
Wrote  moving  letters  to  me  day  by  day; 

Hard  though  I  tried  to  love  I  tried  in  vain, 
For  she  was  plain  and  lame  and  fat  and  short, 
Forty  and  overkind. 

Tis  said  that  if  a  woman  woo,  no  man 

Should  leave  her  till  she  have  prevailed;  and,  true, 
A  man  will  yield  for  pity  if  he  can. 
But  if  the  flesh  rebel  what  can  he  do? 

I  could  not;  hence  I  grieve  my  whole  life  long 
The  wrong  I  did  in  that  I  did  no  wrong. 

In  these  Butlerian  times  one  who  should  speak  of 
"good  taste"  would  incur  the  risk  of  being  called  a  prig. 
Good  taste  is  no  longer  "in."  Yet  even  now,  in  the 
face  of  these  sonnets,  may  not  one  exclaim,  Heaven 
preserve  us  from  the  remorseful  moments  of  a  Butler- 
ian Adonis  of  fifty! 


V 
2CX)  Stuart  P,  Sherman 

The  descendants  of  eminent  Victorians  may  well  be 
thankful  that  their  fathers  had  no  intimate  relations 
with  Butler.  There  is  a  familiar  story  of  Whistler, 
that  when  some  one  praised  his  latest  portrait  as  equal 
to  Velasquez,  he  snapped  back,  "Yes,  but  why  lug  in 
Velasquez?"  Butler,  with  similar  aversion  for  rivals, 
but  without  Whistler's  extempore  wit,  slowly  excogi- 
tated his  killing  sallies  and  entered  them  in  his  note- 
books or  sent  them  in  a  letter  to  Miss  Savage,  preserv- 
ing a  copy  for  the  delectation  of  the  next  age :  *T  do 
not  see  how  I  can  well  call  Mr.  Darwin  the  Pecksniff 
of  Science,  though  this  is  exactly  what  he  is;  but  I 
think  I  may  call  Lord  Bacon  the  Pecksniff  of  his  age 
and  then,  a  little  later,  say  that  Mr.  Darwin  is  the 
Bacon  of  the  Victorian  Era.'*  To  this  he  adds  another 
note  reminding  himself  to  call  "Tennyson  the  Darwin 
of  Poetry,  and  Darwin  the  Tennyson  of  Science."  I 
can  recall  but  one  work  of  a  contemporary  mentioned 
favorably  in  the  biography;  perhaps  there  are  two. 
The  staple  of  his  comment  runs  about  as  follows: 
"Middlemarch"  is  a  "longwinded  piece  of  studied 
brag";  of  "John  Inglesant,"  "I  seldom  was  more  dis- 
pleased with  any  book" ;  of  "Aurora  Leigh,"  "I  dislike 
it  very  much,  but  I  liked  it  better  than  Mrs.  Browning, 
or  Mr.,  either";  of  Rossetti,  "I  dislike  his  face  and  his 
manner  and  his  work,  and  I  hate  his  poetry  and  his 
friends";  of  George  Meredith,  "No  wonder  if  his  work 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  201 

repels  me  that  mine  should  repel  him" ;  "all  I  remember 
is  that  I  disliked  and  distrusted  Morley";  of  Gladstone, 
"Who  was  it  said  that  he  was  'a  good  man  in  the  very- 
worst  sense  of  the  words'  ?"  The  homicidal  spirit  here 
exhibited  may  be  fairly  related  to  his  anxiety  for  the 
death  of  his  father. 

It  was  on  the  whole  characteristic  of  Victorian  free- 
thinkers to  attack  Christianity  with  reverence  and  dis- 
crimination in  an  attempt  to  preserve  its  substance 
w^hile  removing  obstacles  to  the  acceptance  of  its  sub- 
stance. Butler  was  Voltairean.  When  he  did  not  at- 
tack mischievously  like  a  gamin,  he  attacked  vindic- 
tively like  an  Italian  laborer  whose  sweetheart  has 
been  false  to  him.  I  have  seen  it  stated  that  he  was  a 
broad  churchman  and  a  communicant;  and  Mr.  Jones 
produces  a  letter  from  a  clergyman  testifying  to  his 
"saintliness."  But  this  must  be  some  of  Mr.  Jones's 
fun.  From  Gibbon,  read  on  the  voyage  to  New  Zea- 
land, Butler  imbibed,  he  says,  in  a  letter  of  1861,  "a 
calm  and  philosophic  spirit  of  impartial  and  critical 
investigation."  In  1862  he  writes:  "For  the  present 
I  renounce  Christianity  altogether.  You  say  people 
must  have  something  to  believe  in.  I  can  only  say 
that  I  have  not  found  my  digestion  impeded  since  I 
left  off  believing  in  what  does  not  appear  to  be  sup- 
ported by  sufficient  evidence."  When  in  1865  he 
printed  his  "Evidence  for  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus 


202  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

Christ,"  the  manner  of  his  attack  was  impish;  and  so 
was  the  gleeful  exchange  of  notes  between  him  and 
Miss  Savage  over  the  way  the  orthodox  swallowed  the 
bait.  In  his  notebook  he  wrote :  "Mead  is  the  lowest 
of  the  intoxicants,  just  as  Church  is  the  lowest  of  the 
dissipations,  and  carraway  seed  the  lowest  of  the  condi- 
ments." He  went  to  church  once  in  1883  to  please  a 
friend  and  was  asked  whether  it  had  not  bored  him 
as  inconsistent  with  his  principles.  "I  said  that,  having 
given  up  Christianity,  I  was  not  going  to  be  hampered 
by  its  principles.  It  was  the  substance  of  Christianity, 
and  not  its  accessories  of  external  worship,  that  I  had 
objected  to  ...  so  I  went  to  church  out  of  pure 
cussedness."  Finally,  in  a  note  of  1889:  'There  will 
be  no  comfortable  and  safe  development  of  our  social 
arrangements — I  mean  we  shall  not  get  infanticide, 
and  the  permission  of  suicide,  nor  cheap  and  easy 
divorce — till  Jesus  Christ's  ghost  has  been  laid;  and 
the  best  way  to  lay  it  is  to  be  a  moderate  church- 
man." 

Robert  Burns  was  a  free-thinker,  but  he  wrote  the 
"Cotter's  Saturday  Night" ;  Renan  was  a  free-thinker, 
but  he  buried  his  God  in  purple ;  Matthew  Arnold  was 
a  free-thinker,  but  he  gave  new  life  to  the  religious 
poetry  of  the  Bible;  Henry  Adams  believed  only  in 
mathematical  physics,  but  he  wrote  of  Mont  St.  Michel 
and    Chartres   with   chivalrous  and    almost    Catholic 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  203 

tenderness  for  the  Virgin :  for  in  all  these  diverse  men 
there  was  reverence  for  what  men  have  adored  as  their 
highest.  There  was  respect  for  a  tomb,  even  for  the 
tomb  of  a  God.  Butler,  having  transferred  his  faith 
to  the  Bank  of  England,  diverted  himself  like  a  street 
Arab  with  a  slingshot  by  peppering  the  church  win- 
dows. He  established  manners  for  the  contemporary 
Butlerian  who,  coming  down  to  breakfast  on  Christmas 
morning,  exclaims  with  a  pleased  smile,  'Well,  this  is 
the  birthday  of  the  hook-nosed  Nazarene  !'* 

Butler's  moral  note  is  rather  attractive  to  young  and 
middle-aged  persons:  "We  have  all  sinned  and  come 
short  of  the  glory  of  making  ourselves  as  comfortable 
as  we  easily  might  have  done."  His  ethics  is  founded 
realistically  on  physiology  and  economics;  for  "good- 
ness is  naught  unless  it  tends  towards  old  age  and 
sufficiency  of  means."  Pleasure,  dressed  like  a  quiet 
man  of  the  world,  is  the  best  teacher :  "The  devil,  when 
he  dresses  himself  in  angels'  clothes,  can  only  be  de- 
tected by  experts  of  exceptional  skill,  and  so  often  does 
he  adopt  this  disguise  that  it  is  hardly  safe  to  be  seen 
talking  to  an  angel  at  all,  and  prudent  people  will  fol- 
low after  pleasure  as  a  more  homely  but  more  respect- 
able and  on  the  whole  more  trustworthy  guide.''  There 
we  have  something  of  the  tone  of  our  genial  Franklin; 
but  Butler  is  a  Franklin  without  a  single  impulse  of 
Franklin's  wide  benevolence  and  practical  beneficence. 


204  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

a  Franklin  shorn  of  the  spirit  of  his  greatness,  namely, 
his  immensely  intelligent  social  consciousness. 

Having  disposed  of  Christianity,  orthodox  and 
otherwise,  and  having  reduced  the  morality  of  "en- 
lightened selfishness'*  to  its  lowest  terms,  Butler  turned 
in  the  same  spirit  to  the  destruction  of  orthodox  Vic- 
torian science.  We  are  less  concerned  for  the  moment 
with  his  substance  than  with  his  character  and  manner 
as  scientific  controversialist.  *lf  I  cannot,"  he  wrote, 
"and  I  know  I  cannot,  get  the  literary  and  scientific 
bigwigs  to  give  me  a  shilling,  I  can,  and  I  know  I  can, 
heave  bricks  into  the  middle  of  them."  Though  such 
professional  training  as  he  had  was  for  the  church  and 
for  painting,  he  seems  never  to  have  doubted  that  his 
mother  wit  was  sufficient  equipment,  supplemented  by 
reading  in  the  British  Museum,  for  the  overthrow  of 
men  like  Darwin,  Wallace  and  Huxley,  who  from  boy- 
hood had  given  their  lives  to  collecting,  studying  and 
experimenting  with  scientific  data.  "I  am  quite  ready 
to  admit,"  he  records,  "that  I  am  in  a  conspiracy  of 
one  against  men  of  science  in  general."  Having  felt 
himself  covertly  sHghted  in  a  book  for  which  Darwin 
was  responsible,  he  vindictively  assailed,  not  merely 
the  work,  but  also  the  character  of  Darwin  and  his 
friends,  who,  naturally  inferring  that  he  was  an  un- 
scrupulous "bounder"  seeking  notoriety,  generally 
ignored  him 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  205 

His  first  "contribution''  to  evolutionary  theory  had 
been  a  humorous  skit,  written  in  New  Zealand,  on  the 
evolution  of  machines,  suggested  by  "The  Origin  of 
Species,"  and  later  included  in  "Erewhon."  To  sup- 
port this  whimsy  he  found  it  useful  to  revive  the  aban- 
doned "argument  from  design";  and  mother  wit,  still 
working  whimsically,  leaped  to  the  conception  that  the 
organs  of  our  bodies  are  machines.  Thereupon  he 
commenced  serious  scientific  speculator,  and  produced 
"Life  and  Habit,"  1878;  "Evolution  Old  and  New," 
1879;  "Unconscious  Memory,"  1880;  and  "Luck  or 
Cunning,"  1886.  The  germ  of  all  his  speculations, 
contained  in  his  first  volume,  is  the  notion  of  "the  one- 
ness of  personality  existing  between  parents  and  off- 
spring up  to  the  time  that  the  offspring  leaves  the 
parent's  body";  thence  develops  his  theory  that  the 
offspring  "unconsciously"  remembers  what  happened 
to  the  parents ;  and  thence  his  theory  that  a  vitalistic 
purposeful  cunning,  as  opposed  to  the  Darwinian 
chance,  is  the  significant  factor  in  evolution.  His 
theory  has  something  in  common  with  current  philo- 
sophical speculation,  and  it  is  in  part,  as  I  understand, 
a  kind  of  adumbration,  a  shrewd  guess,  at  the  present 
attitude  of  cytologists.  It  has  thus  entitled  Butler  to 
half  a  dozen  footnotes  in  a  centenary  volume  on  Dar- 
win; but  it  hardly  justifies  his  transference  of  Darwin's 
laurels  to  Buffon^  Lamarck,  Erasmus  Darwin  and  him- 


206  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

self;  nor  does  it  justify  his  reiterated  contention  that 
Darwin  was  a  plagiarist,  a  fraud,  a  Pecksniff  and  a 
liar.  He  swelled  the  ephemeral  body  of  scientific 
speculation ;  but  his  contribution  to  the  verified  body  of 
science  was  negligible,  and  the  injuries  that  he  in- 
flicted upon  the  scientific  spirit  were  considerable. 

For  their  symptomatic  value,  we  must  glance  at 
Butler's  sallies  into  some  other  fields.  He  held  as  an 
educational  principle  that  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to 
study  any  subject  till  one  is  ready  to  use  it.  When  in 
his  fifties  he  wished  to  write  music,  he  took  up  for  the 
first  time  the  study  of  counterpoint.  Mr.  Garnett 
having  inquired  what  subject  Butler  and  Jones  would 
take  up  when  they  had  finished  "Narcissus,"  Butler  said 
that  they  "might  write  an  oratorio  on  some  sacred 
subject";  and  when  Garnett  asked  whether  they  had 
anything  in  particular  in  mind,  he  replied  that  they 
were  thinking  of  "The  Woman  Taken  in  Adultery." 
In  the  same  decade  he  cheerfully  applied  for  the  Slade 
professorship  of  art  at  Cambridge ;  and  he  took  credit 
for  the  rediscovery  of  a  lost  school  of  sculpture. 

At  the  age  of  fifty-five  he  brushed  up  his  Greek, 
which  he  "had  not  wholly  forgotten,"  and  read  the 
"Odyssey"  for  the  purposes  of  his  oratorio,  "Ulysses." 
When  he  got  to  Circe  it  suddenly  flashed  upon  him 
that  he  was  reading  the  work  of  a  young  woman! 
Thereupon  he  produced  his  book,  "The  Authoress  of 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  207 

the  Odyssey,"  with  portrait  of  the  authoress,  Nausicaa, 
identification  of  her  birthplace  in  Sicily,  which  pleased 
the  Sicilians,  and  an  account  of  the  way  in  which  she 
wrote  her  poem.  It  was  the  most  startling  literary  dis- 
covery since  Delia  Bacon  burst  into  the  silent  sea  on 
which  Colonel  Fabyan  of  the  biliteral  cypher  is  the 
latest  navigator.  That  the  classical  scholars  laughed 
at  or  ignored  him  did  not  shake  his  belief  that  the  work 
was  as  important  as  anything  he  had  done.  "Perhaps 
it  was,"  he  would  have  remarked,  if  any  one  else  had 
written  it.  "I  am  a  prose  man,"  he  wrote  to  Robert 
Bridges,  "and,  except  Homer  and  Shakespeare" — he 
should  have  added  Nausicaa — "I  have  read  absolutely 
nothing  of  English  poetry  and  very  little  of  English 
prose."  His  inacquaintance  with  English  poetry,  how- 
ever, did  not  embarrass  him,  when,  two  years  after 
bringing  out  his  Sicilian  authoress,  he  cleared  up  the 
mysteries  of  Shakespeare's  sonnets.  Nor  did  it  pre- 
vent his  dismissing  the  skeptical  Dr.  Furnivall,  after  a 
discussion  at  an  A.  B.  C.  shop,  as  a  poor  old  incompe- 
tent. "Nothing,"  said  Alethea  Pontifex,  speaking  for 
her  creator,  "is  well  done  nor  worth  doing  unless,  take 
it  all  round,  it  has  come  pretty  easily."  The  poor  old 
doctor,  like  the  Greek  scholars  and  the  professional 
men  of  science,  had  blunted  his  wits  by  too  much 
research. 

Butler  maintained  that  every  man's  work  is  a  por- 


2o8  Stuart  P.  Sherman 

trait  of  himself,  and  in  his  own  case  the  features  stand 
out  ruggedly  enough.  Why  should  any  one  see  in  this 
infatuated  pursuer  of  paradox  a  reincarnation  of  the 
pagan  wisdom  ?  In  his  small  personal  affairs  he  shows 
a  certain  old-maidish  tidiness  and  the  prudence  of  an 
experienced  old  bachelor,  who  manages  his  little  pleas- 
ures without  scandal.  But  in  his  intellectual  life  what 
vestige  do  we  find  of  the  Greek  or  even  of  the  Roman 
sobriety,  poise  and  decorum?  In  one  respect  Butler 
was  conservative :  he  respected  the  established  political 
and  economic  order.  But  he  respected  it  only  because 
it  enabled  him,  without  bestirring  himself  about  his 
bread  and  butter,  to  sit  quietly  in  his  rooms  at  Clifford's 
Inn  and  invent  attacks  on  every  other  form  of  ortho- 
doxy. With  a  desire  to  be  conspicuous  only  surpassed 
by  his  desire  to  be  original  he  worked  out  the  central 
Butlerian  principle ;  videlicet :  The  fact  that  all  the  best 
qualified  judges  agree  that  a  thing  is  true  and  valuable 
establishes  an  overwhelming  presumption  that  it  is 
valueless  and  false.  With  his  feet  firmly  planted  on 
this  grand  radical  maxim  he  employed  his  lively  wit 
with  lawyer-like  ingenuity  to  make  out  a  case  ao^ainst 
family  life,  of  which  he  was  incapable;  against  imagi- 
native love,  of  which  he  was  ignorant ;  against  chivalry, 
otherwise  the  conventions  of  gentlemen,  which  he  had 
but  imperfectly  learned;  against  Victorian  men  of  let- 
ters, whom,  by  his  own  account,  he  had  never  read; 


Diogenes  of  the  Victorians  209 

against  altruistic  morality  and  the  substance  of  Chris- 
tianity, which  were  repugnant  to  his  selfishness  and 
other  vices;  against  Victorian  men  of  science,  w^hose 
researches  he  had  never  imitated;  and  against  Eliza- 
bethan and  classical  scholarship,  which  he  took  up  in 
an  odd  moment  as  one  plays  a  game  of  solitaire  before 
going  to  bed.  To  his  disciples  he  could  not  bequeath 
his  cleverness;  but  he  left  them  his  recipe  for  origi- 
nality, his  manners  and  his  assurance,  which  has  been 
gathering  compound  interest  ever  since.  In  the  origi- 
nal manuscript  of  "Alps  and  Sanctuaries"  he  consigned 
"Raffaele,  along  with  Socrates,  Virgil  [the  last  two 
displaced  later  by  Plato  and  Dante],  Marcus  Aurelius 
Antoninus,  Goethe,  Beethoven,  and  another ,  to  limbo 
as  the  Seven  Humbugs  of  Christiandom."  Who  was 
the  unnamed  seventh  ? 


BED-BOOKS  AND  NIGHT-LIGHTS 
By  H.  M.  ToMLiNsoN 

I  shall  not  forget  with  what  a  thrill  of  delis^ht  I  came  upon 
H.  M.  Tomlinson's  Old  Junk,  the  volume  of  essays  from  which 
this  is  borrowed.  One  feels,  in  stumbling  upon  such  a  book,  much 
as  some  happy  and  astounded  readers  must  have  felt  in  1878 
when  An  Inland  Voyage  came  out.  It  makes  one  wonder,  sub- 
mitting one's  self  to  the  moving  music  and  magic  of  that  prose, 
so  simple  and  yet  so  subtle  in  its  flavor,  whether  poetry  is  not, 
after  all,  an  inferior  and  more  mechanic  form.  "The  cool 
element  of  prose,"  that  perfect  phrase  of  Milton's,  comes  back 
to  mind.  How  direct  and  satisfying  a  passage  to  the  mind  Mr. 
Tomlinson's  paragraphs  have.  How  they  build  and  cumulate, 
how  the  sentences  shift,  turn  and  move  in  delicate  loops  and 
ridges  under  the  blowing  wind  of  thought,  like  the  sand  of  the 
dunes  that  he  describes  in  one  essay.  And  through  it  all,  as 
intangible  but  as  real  and  beautifying  as  moonlight,  there  is  the 
pervading  brightness  of  a  particular  way  of  looking  at  the  world, 
something  for  which  we  have  no  catchword,  the  illumination 
of  a  spirit  at  once  humorous,  melancholy,  shrewd,  lovely  and 
humane.  Somehow,  when  one  is  caught  in  the  web  of  that  ex- 
quisite, considered  prose,  the  awkward  symbols  of  speech  seem 
transparent;  we  come  close  to  a  man's  mind. 

In  Mr.  Tomlinson's  three  books — The  Sea  and  the  Jungle 
(1912),  Old  Junk  (1920)  and  London  River  (1921)  is  revealed 
one  of  the  most  sincere  and  perfect  workmen  .in  contemporary 
prose. 

H.  M.  Tomlinson  was  born  in  1873 ;  among  his  early  memories 
he  records:  'T  was  an  office  boy  and  a  clerk  among  London's 
ships,  in  the  last  days  of  the  clippers.  And  I  am  forced  to  recall 
some  of  the  things — such  as  bookkeeping  in  a  jam  factory  and 
stoking  on  a  tramp  steamer."  He  joined  the  staff  of  the  London 
Morning  Leader  in  1904;  which  was  later  merged  with  the  Daily 
News,  and  to  this  journal  he  was  attached  for  several  years. 
During  the  War  he  was  a  correspondent  in  France;  at  the 
danger  of  incurring  his  anger  (should  he  see  this)  I  quote  Mr. 
S.  K.  Ratcliffe  on  this  phase  of  his  work: — "One  who  was  the 
friend  of  all,  a  sweet  and  fine  spirit  moving  untouched  amid  the 
ruin  and  terror,  expressing  itself  everywhere  with  perfect  sim- 
plicity, and  at  times  with  a  shattering  candor." 

In  1917  he  became  associate  editor  of  the  London  Nation, 
where,  if  you  are  interested,  you  may  find  his  initials  almost 
weekly. 

210 


Bed-Books  and  Night-Lights  2il 

The  rain  flashed  across  the  midnight  window  with 
a  myriad  feet.  There  was  a  groan  in  outer  darkness, 
the  voice  of  all  nameless  dreads.  The  nervous  candle- 
flame  shuddered  by  my  bedside.  The  groaning  rose 
to  a  shriek,  and  the  little  flame  jumped  in  a  panic,  and 
nearly  left  its  white  column.  Out  of  the  corners  of 
the  room  swarmed  the  released  shadows.  Black  spec- 
ters danced  in  ecstasy  over  my  bed.  I  love  fresh  air, 
but  I  cannot  allow  it  to  slay  the  shining  and  delicate 
body  of  my  little  friend  the  candle-flame,  the  comrade 
who  ventures  with  me  into  the  solitudes  beyond  mid- 
night.   I  shut  the  window. 

They  talk  of  the  candle-power  of  an  electric  bulb. 
What  do  they  mean  ?  It  cannot  have  the  faintest  glim- 
mer of  the  real  power  of  my  candle.  It  would  be  as 
right  to  express,  in  the  same  inverted  and  foolish  com- 
parison, the  worth  of  ''those  delicate  sisters,  the 
Pleiades."  That  pinch  of  star  dust,  the  Pleiades,  ex- 
quisitely remote  in  deepest  night,  in  the  profound 
where  light  all  but  fails,  has  not  the  power  of  a  sul- 
phur match ;  yet,  still  apprehensive  to  the  mind  though 
tremulous  on  the  limit  of  vision,  and  sometimes  even 
vanishing,  it  brings  into  distinction  those  distant  and 
difficult  hints — hidden  far  behind  all  our  verified 
thoughts — which  we  rarely  properly  view.  I  should 
like  to  know  of  any  great  arc-lamp  which  could  do 
that.     So  the  star-like  candle  for  me.     No  other  light 


212  H.  M.  Tomlinson 

follows  so  intimately  an  author's  most  ghostly  sug- 
gestion. We  sit,  the  candle  and  I,  in  the  midst  of  the 
shades  we  are  conquering,  and  sometimes  look  up  from 
the  lucent  page  to  contemplate  the  dark  hosts  of  the 
enemy  with  a  smile  before  they  overwhelm  us ;  as  they 
will,  of  course.  Like  me,  the  candle  is  mortal;  it  will 
burn  out. 

As  the  bed-book  itself  should  be  a  sort  of  night-light, 
to  assist  its  illumination,  coarse  lamps  are  useless. 
They  would  douse  the  book.  The  light  for  such  a 
book  must  accord  with  it.  It  must  be,  like  the  book,  a 
limited,  personal,  mellow,  and  companionable  glow; 
the  solitary  taper  beside  the  only  worshiper  in  a  sanc- 
tuary. That  is  why  nothing  can  compare  with  the 
intimacy  of  candle-light  for  a  bed-book.  It  is  a  living 
heart,  bright  and  warm  in  central  night,  burning  for 
us  alone,  holding  the  gaunt  and  towering  shadows  at 
bay.  There  the  monstrqus  specters  stand  in  our  mid- 
night room,  the  advance  guard  of  the  darkness  of 
the  world,  held  off  by  our  valiant  little  glim,  but  ready 
to  flood  instantly  and  founder  us  in  original  gloom. 

The  wind  moans  without;  ancient  evils  are  at  large 
and  wandering  in  torment.  The  rain  shrieks  across 
the  window.  For  a  moment,  for  just  a  moment,  the 
sentinel  candle  is  shaken,  and  burns  blue  with  terror. 
The  shadows  leap  out  instantly.  The  little  flame 
recovers,  and  merely  looks  at  its  foe  the  darkness,  and 


Bed-Books  and  Night-Lights  213 

back  to  its  own  place  goes  the  old  enemy  of  light  and 
man.  The  candle  for  me,  tiny,  mortal,  warm,  and 
brave,  a  golden  lily  on  a  silver  stem ! 

"Almost  any  book  does  for  a  bed-book,"  a  woman 
once  said  to  me.  I  nearly  replied  in  a  hurry  that 
almost  any  woman  would  do  for  a  wife;  but  that  is 
not  the  way  to  bring  people  to  conviction  of  sin.  Her 
idea  was  that  the  bed-book  is  soporific,  and  for  that 
reason  she  even  advocated  the  reading  of  political 
speeches.  That  would  be  a  dissolute  act.  Certainly 
you  would  go  to  sleep;  but  in  what  a  frame  of  mind! 
You  would  enter  into  sleep  with  your  eyes  shut.  It 
would  be  like  dying,  not  only  unshriven,  but  in  the 
act  of  guilt. 

What  book  shall  it  shine  upon?  Think  of  Plato,  or 
Dante,  or  Tolstoy,  or  a  Blue  Book  for  such  an  occa- 
sion !  I  cannot.  They  will  not  do — they  are  no  good 
to  me.  I  am  not  writing  about  you.  I  know  those 
men  I  have  named  are  transcendent,  the  greater  lights. 
But  I  am  bound  to  confess  at  times  they  bore  me. 
Though  their  feet  are  clay  and  on  earth,  just  as  ours, 
their  stellar  brows  are  sometimes  dim  in  remote  clouds. 
For  my  part,  they  are  too  big  for  bed-fellows.  I 
cannot  see  myself,  carrying  my  feeble  and  restricted 
glim,  following  (in  pajamas)  the  statuesque  figure  of 
the  Florentine  where  it  stalks,  aloof  in  its  garb  of 
austere  pity,  the  sonorous  deeps  of  Hades.     Hades! 


214  ^-  ^'   Tomlinson 

Not  for  me;  not  after  midnight!    Let  those  go  who 

like  it. 

As  for  the  Russian,  vast  and  disquieting,  I  refuse  to 
leave  all,  including  the  blankets  and  the  pillow,  to  fol- 
low him  into  the  gelid  tranquillity  of  the  upper  air, 
where  even  the  colors  are  prismatic  spicules  of  ice,  to 
brood  upon  the  erratic  orbit  of  the  poor  mud-ball  below 
called  earth.  I  know  it  is  my  world  also;  but  I  can- 
not help  that.  It  is  too  late,  after  a  busy  day,  and  at 
that  hour,  to  begin  overtime  on  fashioning  a  new  and 
better  planet  out  of  cosmic  dust.  By  breakfast-time, 
nothing  useful  would  have  been  accomplished.  We 
should  all  be  where  we  were  the  night  before.  The 
job  is  far  too  long,  once  the  pillow  is  nicely  set. 

For  the  truth  is,  there  are  times  when  we  are  too 
weary  to  remain  attentive  and  thankful  under  the  im- 
proving eye,  kindly  but  severe,  of  the  seers.  There 
are  times  when  we  do  not  wish  to  be  any  better  than 
we  are.  We  do  not  wish  to  be  elevated  and  improved. 
At  midnight,  away  with  such  books!  As  for  the 
literary  pundits,  the  high  priests  of  the  Temple  of  Let- 
ters, it  is  interesting  and  helpful  occasionally  for  an 
acolyte  to  swinge  them  a  good  hard  one  with  an  in- 
cense-burner, and  cut  and  run,  for  a  change,  to  some- 
thing outside  the  rubrics.  Midnight  is  the  time  when 
one  can  recall,  with  ribald  delight,  the  names  of  all  the 
Great  Works  which  every  gentleman  ought  to  have 


Bed-Books  and  Night-Lights  215 

read,  but  which  some  of  us  have  not.  For  there  is 
almost  as  much  clotted  nonsense  written  about  litera- 
ture as  there  is  about  theology. 

There  are  few  books  which  go  with  midnight,  soli- 
tude, and  a  candle.  It  is  much  easier  to  say  what 
does  not  please  us  then  than  what  is  exactly  right. 
The  book  must  be,  anyhow,  something  benedictory  by 
a  sinning  fellow-man.  Cleverness  would  be  repellent 
at  such  an  hour.  Cleverness,  anyhow,  is  the  level 
of  mediocrity  to-day;  we  are  all  too  infernally  clever. 
The  first  witty  and  perverse  paradox  blows  out  the 
candle.  Only  the  sick  in  mind  crave  cleverness,  as  a 
morbid  body  turns  to  drink.  The  late  candle  throws 
its  beams  a  great  distance;  and  its  rays  make  trans- 
parent much  that  seemed  massy  and  important.  The 
mind  at  rest  beside  that  light,  when  the  house  is  asleep, 
and  the  consequential  affairs  of  the  urgent  world  have 
diminished  to  their  right  proportions  because  w^e  see 
them  distantly  from  another  and  a  more  tranquil  place 
in  the  heavens  where  duty,  honor,  witty  arguments, 
controversial  logic  on  great  questions,  appear  such  as 
will  leave  hardly  a  trace  of  fossil  in  the  indurated  mud 
which  presently  will  cover  them — the  mind  then  cer- 
tainly smiles  at  cleverness. 

For  though  at  that  hour  the  body  may  be  dog-tired, 
the  mind  is  white  and  lucid,  like  that  of  a  man  from 
whom  a  fever  has  abated.     It  is  bare  of  illusions.     It 


21 6  H,  M.   To  ml  ins  on 

has  a  sharp  focus,  small  and  starlike,  as  a  clear  and 
lonely  flame  left  burning  by  the  altar  of  a  shrine  from 
which  all  have  gone  but  one.  A  book  which  ap- 
proaches that  light  in  the  privacy  of  that  place  must 
come,  as  it  were,  with  honest  and  open  pages. 

I  like  Heine  then,  though.  His  mockery  of  the  grave 
and  great,  in  those  sentences  which  are  as  brave  as 
pennants  in  a  breeze,  is  comfortable  and  sedative. 
One's  own  secret  and  awkward  convictions,  never  ex- 
pressed because  not  lawful  and  because  it  is  hard  to  get 
words  to  bear  them  lightly,  seem  then  to  be  heard  aloud 
in  the  mild,  easy,  and  confident  diction  of  an  immortal 
whose  voice  has  the  blitheness  of  one  who  has  watched, 
amused  and  irreverent,  the  high  gods  in  eager  and 
secret  debate  on  the  best  way  to  keep  the  gilt  and 
trappings  on  the  body  of  the  evil  they  have  created. 

That  first-rate  explorer,  Gulliver,  is  also  fine  in  the 
light  of  the  intimate  candle.  Have  you  read  lately 
again  his  Voyage  to  the  Houyhnhnms?  Try  it  alone 
again  in  quiet.  Swift  knew  all  about  our  contemporary 
troubles.  He  has  got  it  all  down.  Why  was  he  called 
a  misanthrope?  Reading  that  last  voyage  of  Gulliver 
in  the  select  intimacy  of  midnight  I  am  forced  to 
wonder,  not  at  Swift's  hatred  of  mankind,  not  at  his 
satire  of  his  fellows,  not  at  the  strange  and  terrible 
nature  of  this  genius  who  thought  that  much  of  us,  but 
how  it  is  that  after  such  a  wise  and  sorrowful  reveal- 


Bed-Books  and  Night-Lights  217 

ing  of  the  things  we  insist  on  doing,  and  our  reasons 
for  doing  them,  and  what  happens  after  we  have  done 
them,  men  do  not  change.  It  does  seem  impossible 
that  society  could  remain  unaltered,  after  the  surprise 
its  appearance  should  have  caused  it  as  it  saw  its  face 
in  that  ruthless  mirror.  We  point  instead  to  the  fact 
that  Swift  lost  his  mind  in  the  end.  Well,  that  is  not 
a  matter  for  surprise. 

Such  books,  and  France's  "Isle  of  Penguins,"  are  not 
disturbing  as  bed-books.  They  resolve  one's  agitated 
and  outraged  soul,  relieving  it  with  some  free  expres- 
sion for  the  accusing  and  questioning  thoughts  en- 
gendered by  the  day's  affairs.  But  they  do  not  rest 
immediately  to  hand  in  the  book-shelf  by  the  bed. 
They  depend  on  the  kind  of  day  one  has  had.  Sterne  is 
closer.  One  would  rather  be  transported  as  far  as 
possible  from  all  the  disturbances  of  earth's  envelope 
of  clouds,  and  "Tristram  Shandy"  is  sure  to  be  found 
in  the  sun. 

But  best  of  all  books  for  midnight  are  travel  books. 
Once  I  was  lost  every  night  for  months  with  Doughty 
in  the  "Arabia  Deserta."  He  is  a  craggy  author.  A  long 
course  of  the  ordinary  facile  stuff,  such  as  one  gets  in 
the  Press  every  day,  thinking  it  is  English,  sends  one 
thoughtless  and  headlong  among  the  bitter  herbs  and 
stark  boulders  of  Doughty's  burning  and  spacious  ex- 
panse; only  to  get  bewildered,  and  the  shins  broken, 


21 8  H,  M.  Tomlinson 

and  a  great  fatigue  at  first,  in  a  strange  land  of  fierce 
sun,  hunger,  glittering  spar,  ancient  plutonic  rock,  and 
very  Adam  himself.  But  once  you  are  acclimatized, 
and  know  the  language — it  takes  time — there  is  no 
more  London  after  dark,  till,  a  wanderer  returned  from 
a  forgotten  land,  you  emerge  from  the  interior  of 
Arabia  on  the  Red  Sea  coast  again,  feeling  as  though 
you  had  lost  touch  with  the  world  you  used  to  know. 
And  if  that  doesn't  mean  good  writing  I  know  of  no 
other  test. 

Because  once  there  was  a  father  whose  habit  it  was 
to  read  with  his  boys  nightly  some  chapters  of  the 
Bible — and  cordially  they  hated  that  habit  of  his — I 
have  that  Book  too;  though  I  fear  I  have  it  for  no 
reason  that  he,  the  rigid  old  faithful,  would  be  pleased 
to  hear  about.  He  thought  of  the  future  when  he 
read  the  Bible;  I  read  it  for  the  past.  The  familiar 
names,  the  familiar  rhythm  of  its  words,  its  wonder- 
ful well-remembered  stories  of  things  long  past — like 
that  of  Esther,  one  of  the  best  in  English — the  elo- 
quent anger  of  the  prophets  for  the  people  then  who 
looked  as  though  they  were  alive,  but  were  really  dead 
at  heart,  all  is  solace  and  home  to  me.  And  now  I 
think  of  it,  it  is  our  home  and  solace  that  we  w^ant  in 
a  bed-book. 


THE  PRECEPT  OF  PEACE 
By  Louise  Imogen  Guiney 

Louise  Imogen  Guiney  (1861-1920),  one  of  the  rarest  poets 
and  most  delicately  poised  essayists  this  country  has  reared,  has 
been  hitherto  scantily  appreciated  by  the  omnipotent  General 
Reader.  Her  dainty  spoor  is  perhaps  too  lightly  trodden  upon 
earth  to  be  followed  by  the  throng.  And  yet  one  has  faith  in 
the  imperishability  of  such  a  star-dust  track.  This  lovely  and 
profound  "Precept  of  Peace"  is  peculiarly  characteristic  of  her, 
and  reminds  one  of  the  humorous  tranquillity  with  which  she 
faced  the  complete  failure  (financially  speaking)  of  almost  all  her 
books.  There  was  a  certain  sadness  in  learning,  when  the  news 
of  her  death  came,  that  many  of  our  present-day  critical  San- 
hedrim had  never  even  become  aware  of  her  name. 

There  is  no  space,  in  this  brief  note,  to  do  justice  to  her.  The 
student  will  refer  to  the  newly  published  memoir  by  her  friend, 
Alice    Brown. 

She  was  born  in  Boston  in  1861,  daughter  of  General  Patrick 
Guiney  who  fought  in  the  Civil  War.  From  1894-97  she  was 
postmistress  in  Auburndale,  Mass.  Her  later  years  were  spent 
in  England,  mostly  at  Oxford :  the  Bodleian  Library  was  a  candle 
and  she  the  ecstatic  moth. 

A  CERTAIN  sort  of  volutitary  abstraction  is  the  oldest 
and  choicest  of  social  attitudes.  In  France,  where  all 
esthetic  discoveries  are  made,  it  was  crowned  long 
ago:  la  sainte  indifference  is,  or  may  be,  a  cult,  and 
le  saint  indifferent  an  articled  practitioner.  For  the 
Gallic  mind,  brought  up  at  the  knee  of  a  consistent 
paradox,  has  found  that  not  to  appear  concerned  about 
a  desired  good  is  the  only  method  to  possess  it;  full 
happiness  is  given,  in  other  words,  to  the  very  man 
who  will  never  sue  for  it.    This  is  a  secret  neat  as  that 

219 


220  Louise  Imogen  Guiney 

of  the  Sphinx :  to  "go  softly"  among  events,  yet  domi- 
neer them.  Without  fear :  not  because  we  are  brave, 
but  because  we  are  exempt;  we  bear  so  charmed  a  life 
that  not  even  Baldur's  mistletoe  can  touch  us  to  harm 
us.  Without  solicitude:  for  the  essential  thing  is 
trained,  falcon-like,  to  light  from  above  upon  our 
wrists,  and  it  has  become  with  us  an  automatic  motion 
to  open  the  hand,  and  drop  what  appertains  to  us  no 
longer.  Be  it  renown  or  a  new  hat,  the  shorter  stick 
of  celery,  or 

"The  friends  to  whom  we  had  no  natural  right. 
The  homes  that  were  not  destined  to  be  ours," 

it  is  all  one:  let  it  fall  away!  since  only  so,  by  deple- 
tions, can  we  buy  serenity  and  a  blithe  mien.  It  is 
diverting  to  study,  at  the  feet  of  Antisthenes  and  of 
Socrates  his  master,  how  many  indispensables  man  can 
live  without;  or  how  many  he  can  gather  together, 
make  over  into  luxuries,  and  so  abrogate  them. 
Thoreau  somewhere  expresses  himself  as  fuU  of  divine 
pity  for  the  "mover,"  who  on  May-Day  clouds  city 
streets  with  his  melancholy  household  caravans:  fatal 
impedimenta  for  an  immortal.  No :  furniture  is  clearly 
a  superstition.  "I  have  little,  I  want  nothing:  all  my 
treasure  is  in  Minerva's  tower."  Not  that  the  novice 
may  not  accumulate.     Rather,  let  him  collect  beetles 


The  Precept  of  Peace  221 

and  Venetian  interrogation-marks ;  if  so  be  that  he  may 
distinguish  what  is  truly  extrinsic  to  him,  and  bestow 
these  toys,  eventually,  on  the  children  o£  Satan  who 
clamor  at  the  monastery  gate.  Of  all  his  store,  uncon- 
sciously increased,  he  can  always  part  with  sixteen- 
seventeenths,  by  way  of  concession  to  his  individuality, 
and  think  the  subtraction  so  much  concealing  marble 
chipped  from  the  heroic  figure  of  himself.  He  would 
be  a  donor  from  the  beginning;  before  he  can  be 
seen  to  own,  he  will  disencumber,  and  divide.  Strange 
and  fearful  is  his  discovery,  amid  the  bric-a-brac  of 
the  world,  that  this  knowledge,  or  this  material  benefit, 
is  for  him  alone.  He  would  fain  beg  oif  from  the 
acquisition,  and  shake  the  touch  of  the  tangible  from 
his  imperious  wings.  It  is  not  enough  to  cease  to 
strive  for  personal  favor;  your  true  indifferent  is 
Early  Franciscan :  caring  not  to  have,  he  fears  to  hold. 
Things  useful  need  never  become  to  him  things  desir- 
able. Towards  all  commonly-accounted  sinecures,  he 
bears  the  coldest  front  in  Nature,  like  a  magician  walk- 
ing a  maze,  and  scornful  of  its  flower-bordered  de- 
tentions. "I  enjoy  life,"  says  Seneca,  "because  I  am 
ready  to  leave  it."  Meanwhile,  they  who  act  with  too 
jealous  respect  for  their  morrow  of  civilized  comfort, 
reap  only  indigestion,  and  crow's-foot  traceries  for 
their  deluded  eye-corners. 

Now  nothing  is  farther  from  le  saint  indifferent  than 


222  Louise  Imogen  Guiney 

cheap  indifferentism,  so-called :  the  sickness  of  sopho^ 
mores.  His  business  is  to  hide,  not  to  display,  his  lack 
of  interest  in  fripperies.  It  is  not  he  who  looks  languid, 
and  twiddles  his  thumbs  for  sick  misplacedness,  like 
Achilles  among  girls.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  a  smiling 
industrious  elf,  monstrous  attentive  to  the  canons  of 
polite  society.  In  relation  to  others,  he  shows  what 
passes  for  animation  and  enthusiasm;  for  at  all  times 
his  character  is  founded  on  control  of  these  qualities, 
not  on  the  absence  of  them.  It  flatters  his  sense  of 
superiority  that  he  may  thus  pull  wool  about  the  ears 
of  joint  and  several.  He  has  so  strong  a  will  that  it 
can  be  crossed  and  counter-crossed,  as  by  himself,  so 
by  a  dozen  outsiders,  without  a  break  in  his  apparent 
phlegm.  He  has  gone  through  volition,  and  come  out 
at  the  other  side  of  it;  everything  with  him  is  a  specific 
act :  he  has  no  habits.  Le  saint  indifferent  is  a  dramatic 
wight :  he  loves  to  refuse  your  proffered  six  per  cent, 
when,  by  a  little  haggling,  he  may  obtain  three-and-a- 
half.  For  so  he  gets  away  with  his  own  mental  proc- 
esses virgin :  it  is  inconceivable  to  you  that,  being  sane, 
he  should  so  comport  himself.  Amiable,  perhaps,  only 
by  painful  propulsions  and  sore  vigilance,  let  him  ap- 
pear the  mere  inheritor  of  eas^  good-nature.  Unselfish 
out  of  sheer  pride,  and  ever  eager  to  claim  the  slippery 
side  of  the  pavement,  or  the  end  cut  of  the  roast  (on 
the  secret  ground,  be  it  understood,  that  he  is  not  as 


The  Precept  of  Peace  223 

Capuan  men,  who  wince  at  trifles),  let  him  have  his 
ironic  reward  in  passing  for  one  whose  physical  con- 
noisseurship  is  yet  in  the  raw.  That  sympathy  which 
his  rule  forbids  his  devoting  to  the  usual  objects,  he 
expends,  with  some  bravado,  upon  their  opposites;  for 
he  would  fain  seem  a  decent  partizan  of  some  sort, 
not  what  he  is,  a  bivalve  intelligence,  Tros  Tyriusque. 
He  is  known  here  and  there,  for  instance,  as  valorous 
in  talk ;  yet  he  is  by  nature  a  solitary,  and,  for  the 
most  part,  somewhat  less  communicative  than 

''The  wind  that  sings  to  himself  as  he  makes  stride, 
Lonely  and  terrible,  on  the  Andean  height." 

Imagining  nothing  idler  than  words  in  the  face  of 
grave  events,  he  condoles  and  congratulates  with  the 
genteelest  air  in  the  world.  In  short,  while  there  is 
anything  expected  of  him,  while  there  are  spectators 
to  be  fooled,  the  stratagems  of  the  fellow  prove  inex- 
haustible. It  is  only  when  he  is  quite  alone  that  he 
drops  his  jaw,  and  stretches  his  legs;  then  heigho! 
arises  like  a  smoke,  and  envelopes  him  becomingly,  the 
beautiful  native  well-bred  torpidity  of  the  gods,  of 
poetic  boredom,  of  ''the  Oxford  manner." 

"How  weary,  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable!"  sighed 
Hamlet  of  this  mortal  outlook.  As  it  came  from  him 
in  the  beginning,  that  plaint,  in  its  sincerity,  can  come 


224  Louise  Imogen  Guiney 

only  from  the  man  of  culture,  who  feels  about  him 
vast  mental  spaces  and  depths,  and  to  whom  the  face 
of  creation  is  but  comparative  and  symbolic.  Nor  will 
he  breathe  it  in  the  common  ear,  where  it  may  woo 
misapprehensions,  and  breed  ignorant  rebellion.  The 
unlettered  must  ever  love  or  hate  what  is  nearest  him, 
and,  for  lack  of  perspective,  think  his  own  fist  the  size 
of  the  sun.  The  social  prizes,  which,  with  mellowed 
observers,  rank  as  twelfth  or  thirteenth  in  order  of 
desirability,  such  as  wealth  and  a  foothold  in  affairs, 
seem  to  him  first  and  sole;  and  to  them  he  clings  like 
a  barnacle.  But  to  our  indifferent,  nothing  is  so  vulgar 
as  close  suction.  He  will  never  tighten  his  fxUgers  on 
loaned  opportunity ;  he  is  a  gentleman,  the  hero  of  the 
habitually  relaxed  grasp.  A  light  unprejudiced  hold 
on  his  profits  strikes  him  as  decent  and  comely,  though 
his  true  artistic  pleasure  is  still  in  "fallings  from  us, 
vanishings."  It  costs  him  little  to  loose  and  to  forego, 
to  unlace  his  tentacles,  and  from  the  many  who  push 
hard  behind,  to  retire,  as  it  were,  on  a  never-guessed-at 
competency,  "richer  than  untempted  kings."  He  would 
not  be  a  life-prisoner,  in  ever  so  charming  a  bower. 
While  the  tranquil  Sabine  Farm  is  his  delight,  well  he 
knows  that  on  the  dark  trail  ahead  of  him,  even  Sabine 
Farms  are  not  sequacious.  Thus  he  learns  betimes  to 
play  the  guest  under  his  own  cedars,  and,  with  disci- 
plinary intent,  goes  often  from  them ;  and,  hearing  his 


The  Precept  of  Peace  225 

heart-strings  snap  the  third  night  he  is  away,  rejoices 
that  he  is  again  a  freedman.  Where  his  foot  is  planted 
(though  it  root  not  anywhere) ,  he  calls  that  spot  home. 
No  Unitarian  in  locality,  it  follows  that  he  is  the  best 
of  travelers,  tangential  merely,  and  pleased  with  each 
new  vista  of  the  human  Past.  He  sometimes  wishes 
his  understanding  less,  that  he  might  itch  deliciously 
with  a  prejudice.  With  cosmic  congruities,  great  and 
general  forces,  he  keeps,  all  along,  a  tacit  understand- 
ing, such  as  one  has  with  beloved  relatives  at  a  dis- 
tance ;  and  his  finger,  airily  inserted  in  his  outer  pocket, 
is  really  upon  the  pulse  of  eternity.  His  vocation,  how- 
ever, is  to  bury  himself  in  the  minor  and  immediate 
task;  and  from  his  intent  manner,  he  gets  confounded, 
promptly  and  permanently,  with  the  victims  of  com- 
mercial ambition. 

The  true  use  of  the  much-praised  Lucius  Gary,  Vis- 
count Falkland,  has  hardly  been  apprehended:  he  is 
simply  the  patron  saint  of  indifferents.  From  first  to 
last,  almost  alone  in  that  discordant  time,  he  seems  to 
have  heard  far-off  resolving  harmonies,  and  to  have 
been  rapt  away  with  foreknowledge.  Battle,  to  which 
all  knights  were  bred,  was  penitential  to  him.  It  was 
but  a  childish  means:  and  to  what  end?  He  mean- 
while— and  no  man  carried  his  will  in  better  abeyance 
to  the  scheme  of  the  universe — wanted  no  diligence  in 
camp  or  council.     Cares  sat  handsomely  on  him  who 


226  Louise  Imogen  Guiney 

cared  not  at  all,  who  won  small  comfort  from  the 
cause  which  his  conscience  finally  espoused.  He 
labored  to  be  a  doer,  to  stand  well  with  observers ;  and 
none  save  his  intimate  friends  read  his  agitation  and 
profound  weariness.  "I  am  so  much  taken  notice  of," 
he  writes,  "for  an  impatient  desire  for  peace,  that  it 
is  necessary  I  should  hkewise  make  it  appear  how  it  is 
not  out  of  fear  for  the  utmost  hazard  of  war.''  And 
so,  driven  from  the  ardor  he  had  to  the  simulation  of 
the  ardor  he  lacked,  loyally  daring,  a  sacrifice  to  one  of 
two  transient  opinions,  and  inly  impartial  as  a  star, 
Lord  Falkland  fell:  the  young  never-to-be-forgotten 
martyr  of  Newburg  field.  The  imminent  deed  he 
made  a  work  of  art;  and  the  station  of  the  mo- 
ment the  only  post  of  honor.  Life  and  death  may  be 
all  one  to  such  a  man:  but  he  will  at  least  take  the 
noblest  pains  to  discriminate  between  Tweedledum  and 
Tweedledee,  if  he  has  to  write  a  book  about  the  varia- 
tions of  their  antennae.  And  like  the  Carolian  ex- 
emplar is  the  disciple.  The  indifferent  is  a  good  thinker, 
or  a  good  fighter.  He  is  no  "immartial  minion,"  as 
dear  old  Chapman  suffers  Hector  to  call  Tydides. 
Nevertheless,  his  sign-manual  is  content  with  humble 
and  stagnant  conditions.  Talk  of  scaling  the  Hima- 
layas of  life  affects  him,  very  palpably,  as  "tall  talk." 
He  deals  not  with  things,  but  with  the  impressions  and 
analogies  of  things.    The  material  counts  for  nothing 


The  Precept  of  Peace  227 

with  him :  he  has  moulted  it  away.  Not  so  sure  of  the 
identity  of  the  higher  course  of  action  as  he  is  of  his 
consecrating  dispositions,  he  feels  that  he  may  make 
heaven  again,  out  of  sundries,  as  he  goes.  Shall  not  a 
beggarly  duty,  discharged  with  perfect  temper,  land 
him  in  "the  out-courts  of  Glory,"  quite  as  successfully 
as  a  grand  Sunday-school  excursion  to  front  the  cruel 
Paynim  foe  ?  He  thinks  so.  Experts  have  thought  so 
before  him.  Francis  Drake,  with  the  national  alarum 
instant  in  his  ears,  desired  first  to  win  at  bowls,  on 
the  Devon  sward,  "and  afterwards  to  settle  with  the 
Don.*'  No  one  will  claim  a  buccaneering  hero  for  an 
indifferent,  however.  The  Jesuit  novices  were  ball- 
playing  almost  at  that  very  time,  three  hundred  years 
ago,  when  some  too  speculative  companion,  figuring  the 
end  of  the  world  in  a  few  moments  (with  just  leisure 
enough,  between,  to  be  shriven  in  chapel,  according  to 
his  own  thrifty  mind),  asked  Louis  of  Gonzaga  how 
he,  on  his  part,  should  employ  the  precious  interval. 
"I  should  go  on  with  the  game,"  said  the  most  inno- 
cent and  most  ascetic  youth  among  them.  But  to  cite 
the  behavior  of  any  of  the  saints  is  to  step  over  the 
playful  line  allotted.  Indifference  of  the  mundane 
brand  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  their  detachment, 
which  is  emancipation  wrought  in  the  soul,  and  the 
ineffable  efBorescence  of  the  Christian  spirit.  Like 
most  supernatural  virtues,  it  has  a  laic  shadow;  the 


228  Louise  Imogen  Guiney 

counsel  to  abstain,  and  to  be  unsolicitous,  is  one  not 
only  of  perfection,  but  also  of  polity.  A  very  little 
nonadhesion  to  common  affairs,  a  little  reserve  of  un- 
concern, and  the  gay  spirit  of  sacrifice,  provide  the 
moral  immunity  which  is  the  only  real  estate.  The 
indifferent  believes  in  storms :  since  tales  of  shipwreck 
encompass  him.  But  once  among  his  own  kind,  he 
wonders  that  folk  should  be  circumvented  by  merely 
extraneous  powers!  His  favorite  catch,  woven  in 
among  escaped  dangers,  rises  through  the  roughest 
weather,  and  daunts  it : 

"Now  strike  your  sailes,  ye  jolly  mariners, 
For  we  be  come  into  a  quiet  rode." 

No  slave  to  any  vicissitude,  his  imagination  is,  on  the 
contrary,  the  cheerful  obstinate  tyrant  of  all  that  is. 
He  lives,  as  Keats  once  said  of  himself,  "in  a  thousand 
worlds,"  withdrawing  at  will  from  one  to  another, 
often  curtailing  his  circumference  to  enlarge  his 
liberty.  His  universe  is  a  universe  of  balls,  like  those 
which  the  cunning  Oriental  carvers  make  out  of  ivory; 
each  entire  surface  perforated  with  the  same  delicate 
pattern,  each  moving  prettily  and  inextricably  within 
the  other,  and  all  but  the  outer  one  impossible  to 
handle.  In  some  such  innermost  asylum  the  right  sort 
of  dare-devil  sits  smiling,  while  men  rage  or  weep. 


WINTER  MIST 
By  Robert  Palfrey  Utter 

Robert  Palfrey  Utter  was  born  in  1875,  in  Olympia,  Wash- 
ington. He  graduated  from  Harvard  (I  am  sorry  there  are  so 
many  Harvard  men  in  this  book:  I  didn't  know  they  were  Har- 
vard men  until  too  late)  in  1898  and  took  his  Ph.D.  there  in 
1906.  After  a  varied  experience,  including  editorial  work  on 
the  Youth's  Companion,  reporting  on  the  New  York  Evening 
Post,  ranching  in  Mexico  and  graduate  study  at  Harvard,  he 
went  to  Amherst,  1906-18,  as  associate  professor  of  English.  He 
was  on  the  faculty  of  the  A.  E.  F.  University  at  Beaune,  France, 
1919;  and  in  1920  became  associate  professor  of  English  at  the 
University  of  California. 

Mr.  Utter  has  contributed  largely  to  the  magazines,  and  has 
published  Guide  to  Good  English  (1914),  Every-Day  Words  and 
Their  Uses  (1916),  and  Every-Day  Pronunciation  (1918). 

Former  students  of  his  at  Amherst  have  told  me  of  the  last- 
ing stimulus  his  teaching  has  given  them :  that  he  can  beautifully 
practise  what  he  preaches  of  the  art  of  writing,  this  essay  shows. 

From  a  magazine  with  a  rather  cynical  cover  I 
learned  very  recently  that  for  pond  skating  the  proper 
costume  is  bro\vn  homespun  with  a  fur  collar  on  the 
jacket,  whereas  for  private  rinks  one  wears  a  gray 
herringbone  suit  and  taupe-colored  alpine.  Oh,  bar- 
ren years  that  I  have  been  a  skater,  and  no  one  told 
me  of  this !  And  here's  another  thing.  I  was  patiently 
trying  to  acquire  a  counter  turn  under  the  idle  gaze 
of  a  hockey  player  who  had  no  better  business  till  the 
others  arrived  than  to  watch  my  efforts.  "What  I 
don't  see  about  that  game,'*  he  said  at  last,  *'is  who 

229 


230  Robert  Palfrey  Utter 

j^ins  ?"  It  had  never  occurred  to  me  to  ask.  He  looked 
bored,  and  I  remembered  that  the  pictures  in  the  mag- 
azine showed  the  wearers  of  the  careful  costumes  for 
rink  and  pond  skating  as  having  rather  blank  eyes 
that  looked  inimitably  bored.  I  have  hopes  of  the 
"rocker"  and  the  "mohawk" ;  I  might  acquire  a  proper 
costume  for  skating  on  a  small  river  if  I  could  learn 
what  it  is;  but  aJjOTfidLlook — why,  even  hockey  does 
not  borq  me,  unless  I  stop  to  watch  it.  I  don't  wonder 
that  those  who  play  it  look  bored.  Even  Alexander, 
who  played  a  more  imaginative  game  than  hockey, 
was  bored — poor  fellow,  he  should  have  taken  U2  fancy 
.skating  in  his  youth;  I  never  heard  of  a  human  being 
who  pretended  to  a  complete  conquest  of  it. 

I  like  pond  skating  best  by  moonlight.  The  hollow 
among  the  hills  will  always  have  a  bit  of  mist  about 
it,  let  the  sky  be  clear  as  it  may.  The  moonlight,  which 
seems  so  lucid  and  brilliant  when  you  look  up,  is  all 
pearl  and  smoke  round  the  pond  and  the  hills.  The 
shore  that  was  like  iron  under  your  heel  as  you  came 
down  to  the  ice  is  vague,  when  you  look  back  at  it  from 
the  center  of  the  pond,  as  the  memory  of  a  dream. 
The  motion  is  like  flying  in  a  dream;  you  float  free 
and  the  world  floats  under  you ;  your  velocity  is  with- 
out effort  and  without  accomplishment,  for,  speed  as 
you  may,  you  leave  nothing  behind  and  approach  noth- 
ing.   You  look  upward.    The  mist  is  overhead  now; 


Winter  Mist  231 

you  see  the  moon  in  a  * 'hollow  halo"  at  the  bottom  of 
an  "icy  crystal  cup,"  and  you  yourself  are  in  just  such 
another.  The  mist,  palely  opalescent,  drives  past  her 
out  of  nothing  into  nowhere.  Like  yourself,  she  is  the 
center  of  a  circle  of  vague  limit  and  vaguer  content, 
where  passes  a  swift,  ceaseless  stream  of  impres- 
sion through  a  faintly  luminous  halo  of  conscious- 
ness. 

If  by  moonlight  the  mist  plays  upon  the  emotions 
like  faint,  bewitching  music,  m  sunlight  it  is  scarcely 
less.     More  often  than  not  when. I  go  for  my  skating 
to  our  cosy  little  river,  a  winding  mile  from  the  mill- 
dam  to  the  railroad  trestle,  the  hills  are  clothed  in 
silver  mist  which  frames  them  in  vignettes  with  blurred 
edges.    The  tone  is  that  of  Japanese  paintings  on  white 
silk,  their  color  showing  soft  and  dull  through  the 
frost-powder  with  which  the  air  is  filled.    At  the  mill- 
dam  the  hockey  players  furiously  rage  together,  but 
I  heed  them  not,  and  in  a  moment  am  beyond  the  first   ^T 
bend,  where  their  clamor  comes  softened  on  the  air        / 
like  that  of  a  distant  convention  of  politic  crows.  \  Thefr- 
silver  powder  has  fallen  on  the  ice,  just  enough  to 
cover  earlier  tracings  and  leave  me  a  fresh  plate  to 
etch  with  grapevines  and  arabesques.     The  stream 
winds  ahead  like  an  unbroken  road,   striped  across 
with    soft-edged    shadows    of    violet,    indigo,    and 
lavender.     On  one  side  it  is  bordered  with  leaning 


232  Robert  Palfrey  Utter 

birch,  oak,  maple,  hickory,  and  occasional  groups  of 
hemlocks  under  which  the  very  air  seems  tinged  with 
green.  On  the  other,  rounded  masses  of  scrub  oak 
and  alder  roll  back  from  the  edge  of  the  ice  like 
clouds  of  reddish  smoke.  The  river  narrows  and  turns, 
then  spreads  into  a  swamp,  where  I  weave  my  curves 
round  the  straw-colored  tussocks.  Here,  new  as  the 
snow  is,  there  are  earlier  tracks  than  mine.  A  crow 
has  traced  his  parallel  hieroglyph,  alternate  footprints 
with  long  dashes  where  he  trailed  his  middle  toe  as  he 
lifted  his  foot  and  his  spur  as  he  brought  it  down. 
Under  a  low  shrub  that  has  hospitably  scattered  its 
seed  is  a  dainty,  close-wrought  embroidery  of  tiny  bird 
feet  in  irregular  curves  woven  into  a  circular  pattern. 
A  silent  glide  towards  the  bank,  where  among  bare 
twigs  little  forms  flit  and  swing  with  low  conversa- 
tional notes,  brings  me  in  company  with  a  working 
crew  of  pine  siskins,  methodically  rifling  seed  cones 
of  birch  and  alder,  chattering  sotto  voce  the  while. 
Under  a  leaning  hemlock  the  writing  on  the  snow 
tells  of  a  squirrel  that  dropped  from  the  lowest  branch, 
hopped  aimlessly  about  for  a  few  yards,  then  went 
up  the  bank.  Farther  on,  where  the  river  narrows 
again,  a  flutter-headed  rabbit  crossing  at  top  speed 
has  made  a  line  seemingly  as  free  from  frivolous  in- 
direction as  if  it  had  been  defined  by  all  the  ponder- 
osities of  mathematics.     There  is  no  pursuing  track; 


Winter  Mist  233 

was  it  his  own  shadow  he  fled,  or  the  shadow  of  a 
hawk? 

The  mist  now  lies  along  the  base  of  the  hills,  leav- 
ing the  upper  ridges  almost  imperceptibly  veiled  and 
the  rounded  tops  faintly  softened.  The  snowy  slopes 
are  etched  with  brush  and  trees  so  fine  and  soft  that 
they  remind  me  of  Diirer's  engravings,  the  fur  of 
Saint  Jerome's  lion,  the  cock's  feathers  in  the  coat  of 
arms  with  the  skull.  From  behind  the  veil  of  the 
southernmost  hill  comes  a  faint  note  as 

From  undiscoverable  lips  that  blow 
An  immaterial  horn. 

It  is  the  first  far  premonition  of  the  noon  train;  I 
pause  and  watch  long  for  the  next  sign.  At  last  I 
hear  its  throbbing,  which  ceases  as  it  pauses  at  the 
flag  station  under  the  hill.  There  the  invisible  loco- 
motive shoots  a  column  of  silver  vapor  above  the  sur- 
face of  the  mist,  breaking  in  rounded  clouds  at  the 
top,  looking  like  nothing  so  much  as  the  photograph 
of  the  explosion  of  a  submarine  mine,  a  titanic  out- 
burst of  force  in  static  pose,  a  geyser  of  atomized 
water  standing  like  a  frosted  elm  tree.  Then  quick 
puffs  of  dusky  smoke,  the  volley  of  which  does  not 
reach  my  ear  till  the  train  has  stuck  its  black  head  out 
of  fairyland  and  become  a  prosaic  reminder  of  dinner. 


234  Robert  Palfrey  Utter 

High  on  its  narrow  trestle  it  leaps  across  my  little 
river  and  disappears  between  the  sandbanks.  Far 
behind  it^  the  mist  is  again  spreading  into  its  even 
layers./  Silence  is  renewed,  and  I  can  hear  the  musical 
creaking  of  four  starlings  in  an  apple  tree  as  they 
eviscerate  a  few  rotten  apples  on  the  upper  branches^ 
I  turn  and  spin  down  the  curves  and  reaches  of  the 
river  without  delaying  for  embroideries  or  arabesques. 
At  the  mill-dam  the  hockey  game  still  rages ;  the  players 
take  no  heed  of  the  noon  train. 

Let  Zal  and  Rustum  bluster  as  they  will, 
Or  Hatim  call  to  supper  .  .  . 

Their  minds  and  eyes  are  intent  on  a  battered  disk  of 
hard  rubber.  I  begin  to  think  I  have  misjudged  them 
when  I  consider  what  effort  of  imagination  must  be 
involved  in  the  concentration  of  the  faculties  on  such 
an  object,  transcending  the  call  of  hunger  and  the  lure 
of  beauty.  Is  it  to  them  as  is  to  the  mystic  "the  great 
syllable  Om**  whereby  he  attains  Nirvana?  I  cannot 
attain  it;  I  can  but  wonder  what  the  hockey  players 
win  one-half  so  precious  as  the  stuff  they  miss. 


TRIVIA 
By  Logan  Pearsall  Smith 

It  would  be  extravagant  to  claim  that  Pearsall  Smith's  Trivia, 
the  remarkable  little  book  from  which  these  miniature  essays 
are  extracted,  is  well  known :  it  is  too  daintily,  fragile  and  absurd 
and  sophisticated  to  appeal  to  a  very  large  public.  But  it  has 
a  cohort  of  its  own  devotees  and  fanatics,  and  since  its  publi- 
cation in  1917  it  has  become  a  sort  of  password  in  a  secret 
brotherhood  or  intellectual  Suicide  Club.  I  say  suicide  advisedly, 
for  Mr.  Smith's  irony  is  gUtteringly  edged.  Its  incision  is  so 
keen  that  the  reader  is  often  unaware  the  razor  edge  has  turned 
against  himself  until  he  perceives  the  wound  to  be   fatal. 

Pearsall  Smith  was,  in  a  way,  one  of  the  Men  of  the  Nineties. 
But  he  had  Repressions — (an  excellent  thing  to  have,  brothers. 
Most  of  the  great  literature  is  founded  on  judicious  repres- 
sions). He  came  of  an  excellent  old  intellectual  Quaker  family 
down  in  the  Philadelphia  region.  His  father  (if  we  remember 
rightly)  was  one  of  Walt  Whitman's  staunchest  friends  in  the 
Camden  days.  But  when  the  strong  wine  of  the  Nineties  was 
foaming  in  the  vats  and  noggins,  Mr.  Smith  (so  we  imagine 
it,  at  least)  was  still  too  close  to  that  "guarded  education  in 
morals  and  manners"  that  he  had  had^  at  Haver  ford  College, 
Pennsylvania  (and  further  tinctured  with  docility  at  Harvard 
and  Balliol)  to  give  full  rein  to  his  inward  gush  of  hilarious 
satirics.  Like  a  Strong  Silent  Man  he  held  in  that  wellspring 
of  champagne  and  mercury  until  many  many  years  later.  When 
it  came  out  (in  1902  he  first  began  to  print  his  Trivia,  privately; 
the  book  was  published  by  Doubleday  in  IQ17)  it  sparkled  all 
the  more  tenderly  for  its  long  cellarage. 

But  we  must  be  statistical.  Logan  Pearsall  Smith  was  born  at 
Melville,  N.  J.,  in  1865.  As  a  boy  he  lived  in  Philadelphia  and 
Germantown  (do  you  know  Germantown?  it  is  a  foothill  of 
that  mountain  range  whereof  Parnassus  and  Olivet  are  twin 
peaks)  and  was  three  years  at  Haverford  in  the  class  of  '85. 
He  went  to  Harvard  for  a  year,  then  to  Balliol  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  took  his  degree  in  1893.  Ever  since  then,  eheu,  he 
has  lived  in  England. 

Stonehenge 
They  sit  there  for  ever  on  the  dim  horizon  of  my 
mind,  that  Stonehenge  circle  of  elderly  disapproving 

23s 


236  Logan  Pear  sail  Smith 

Faces — Faces  of  the  Uncles  and  Schoolmasters  and 
Tutors  who  frowned  on  my  youth. 

In  the  bright  center  and  sunlight  I  leap,  I  caper, 
I  dance  my  dance ;  but  when  I  look  up,  I  see  they  are 
not  deceived.  For  nothing  ever  placates  them,  noth- 
ing ever  moves  to  a  look  of  approval  that  ring  of  bleak, 
old,  contemptuous  Faces. 

The  Stars 

Battling  my  way  homeward  one  dark  night  against 
the  v/ind  and  rain,  a  sudden  gust,  stronger  than  the 
others,  drove  me  back  into  the  shelter  of  a  tree.  But 
soon  the  Western  sky  broke  open ;  the  illumination  of 
the  Stars  poured  down  from  behind  the  dispersing 
clouds. 

I  was  astonished  at  their  brightness,  to  see  how  they 
filled  the  night  with  their  soft  lustre.  So  I  went  my 
way  accompanied  by  them ;  Arcturus  followed  me,  and 
becoming  entangled  in  a  leafy  tree,  shone  by  glimpses, 
and  then  emerged  triumphant,  Lord  of  the  Western 
Sky.  Moving  along  the  road  in  the  silence  of  my  own 
footsteps,  my  thoughts  were  among  the  Constellations. 
I  was  one  of  the  Princes  of  the  starry  Universe;  in 
me  also  there  was  something  that  was  not  insignificant 
and  mean  and  of  no  account. 


Trivia  237 

The  Spider 

What  shall  I  compare  it  to,  this  fantastic  thing  I 
call  my  Mind?  To  a  waste-paper  basket,  to  a  sieve 
choked  with  sediment,  or  to  a  barrel  full  of  floating 
froth  and  refuse? 

No,  what  it  is  really  most  like  is  a  spider's  web, 
insecurely  hung  on  leaves  and  twigs,  quivering  in 
every  wind,  and  sprinkled  with  dewdrcps  and  dead 
flies.  And  at  its  center,  pondering  for  ever  the  Prob- 
lem of  Existence,  sits  motionless  the  spider-like  and 
uncanny  Soul. 

L'OiSEAU  Bleu 

What  is  it,  I  have  more  than  once  asked  myself, 
what  is  it  that  I  am  looking  for  in  my  walks  about 
London  ?  Sometimes  it  seems  to  me  as  if  I  were  fol- 
lowing a  Bird,  a  bright  Bird  that  sings  sweetly  as  it 
floats  about  from  one  place  to  another. 

When  I  find  myself,  however,  among  persons  of 
middle  age  and  settled  principles,  see  them  moving 
regularly  to  their  offices — ^what  keeps  them  going?  I 
ask  myself.  And  I  feel  ashamed  of  myself  and  my 
Bird. 

There  is  though  a  Philosophic  Doctrine — I  studied 
it  at  College,  and  I  know  that  many  serious  people 


238  Logan  Pearsall  Smith 

believe  it — which  maintains  that  all  men,  in  spite  of 
appearances  and  pretensions,  all  live  alike  for  Pleas- 
ure. This  theory  certainly  brings  portly,  respected 
persons  very  near  to  me.  Indeed,  with  a  sense  of  low 
complicity,  I  have  sometimes  watched  a  Bishop.  Was 
he,  too,  on  the  hunt  for  Pleasure,  solemnly  pursuing 
his  Bird? 

I  See  The  World 

"But  you  go  nowhere,  see  nothing  of  the  world,*' 
my  cousins  said. 

Now  though  I  do  go  sometimes  to  the  parties  to 
which  I  am  now  and  then  invited,  I  find,  as  a  mattei^- 
of  fact,  that  I  get  really  much  more  pleasure  by  look- 
ing in  at  windows,  and  have  a  way  of  my  own  of 
seeing  the  World.  And  of  summer  evenings,  when 
motors  hurry  through  the  late  twilight,  and  the  great 
houses  take  on  airs  of  inscrutable  expectation,  I  go 
owling  out  through  the  dusk;  and  wandering  toward 
the  West,  lose  my  way  in  unknown  streets — an  un- 
known City  of  revels.  And  when  a  door  opens  and  a 
bediamonded  Lady  moves  to  her  motor  over  carpets  un- 
rolled by  powdered  footmen,  I  can  easily  think  her 
some  great  Courtezan,  or  some  half -believed  Duchess, 
hurrying  to  card-tables  and  lit  candles  and  strange 
scenes  of  joy.  I  like  to  see  that  there  are  still  splendid 
people  on  this  flat  earth;  and  at  dances,  standing  in 


Trivia  239 

the  street  with  the  crowd,  and  stirred  by  the  music, 
the  lights,  the  rushing  sound  of  voices,  I  think  the 
Ladies  as  beautiful  as  Stars  who  move  up  those  lanes 
of  light  past  our  rows  of  vagabond  faces;  the  young 
men  look  like  Lords  in  novels;  and  if  (it  has  once  or 
twice  happened)  people  I  know  go  by  me,  they  strike 
me  as  changed  and  rapt  beyond  my  sphere.  And  when 
on  hot  nights  windows  are  left  open,  and  I  can  look 
in  at  Dinner  Parties,  as  I  peer  through  lace  curtains 
and  window-flowers  at  the  silver,  the  women's  shoul- 
ders, the  shimmer  of  their  jewels,  and  the  divine  atti- 
tudes of  their  heads  as  they  lean. and  listen,  I  imagine 
extraordinary  intrigues  and  unheard-of  wines  and  pas- 
sions. 

The  Church  of  England 

I  have  my  Anglican  moments;  and  as  I  sat  there 
that  Sunday  afternoon,  in  the  Palladian  interior  of  the 
London  Church,  and  listened  to  the  unexpressive  voices 
chanting  the  correct  service,  I  felt  a  comfortable  as- 
surance that  we  were  in  no  danger  of  being  betrayed 
into  any  unseemly  manifestations  of  religious  fervor. 
We  had  not  gathered  together  at  that  performance  to 
abase  ourselves  with  furious  hosannas  before  any  dark 
Creator  of  an  untamed  Universe,  no  Deity  of  freaks 
and  miracles  and  sinister  hocus-pocus ;  but  to  pay  our 
duty  to  a  highly  respected  Anglican  First  Cause — un- 


240  Logan  Pear  sail  Smith 

demonstrative,  gentlemanly,  and  conscientious — whom, 
>vithout  loss  of  self-respect,  we  could  decorously  praise. 

Consolation 

The  other  day,  depressed  on  the  Underground,  I 
tried  to  cheer  myself  by  thinking  over  the  joys  of  our 
human  lot.  But  there  wasn't  one  of  them  for  which 
I  seemed  to  care  a  button — ^not  Wine,  nor  Friendship, 
nor  Eating,  nor  Making  Love,  nor  the  Consciousness 
of  Virtue.  Was  it  worth  while  then  going  up  in  a 
lift  into  a  world  that  had  nothing  less  trite  to  offer? 

Then  I  thought  of  reading — the  nice  and  subtle 
happiness  of  reading.  This  was  enough,  this  joy  not 
dulled  by  Age,  this  polite  and  tmpunished  vice,  this 
selfish,  serene,  life-long  intoxication. 

The  Kaleidoscope 

I  find  in  my  mind,  in  its  miscellany  of  ideas  and 
musings,  a  curious  collection  of  little  landscapes  and 
pictures,  shining  and  fading  for  no  reason.  Sometimes 
they  are  views  in  no  way  remarkable — the  corner  of 
a  road,  a  heap  of  stones,  an  old  gate.  But  there  are 
many  charming  pictures  too :  as  I  read,  between  my 
eyes  and  book,  the  Moon  sheds  down  on  harvest  fields 
her  chill  of  silver;  I  see  autumnal  avenues,  with  the 
leaves  falling,  or  swept  in  heaps;  and  storms  blow 
among  my  thoughts,  with  the  rain  beating  for  ever  on 


Trivia  241 

the  fields.  Then  Winter's  upward  glare  of  snow  ap- 
pears ;  or  the  pink  and  delicate  green  of  Spring  in  the 
windy  sunshine;  or  cornfields  and  green  waters,  and 
youths  bathing  in  Summer's  golden  heats. 

And  as  I  walk  about,  certain  places  haunt  me;  a 
cathedral  rises  above  a  dark  blue  foreign  town,  the 
color  of  ivory  in  the  sunset  light;  now  I  find  myself 
in  a  French  garden,  full  of  lilacs  and  bees,  and  shut-in 
sunshine,  with  the  Mediterranean  lounging  and  wash- 
ing outside  its  walls;  now  in  a  little  college  library,  with 
busts,  and  the  green  reflected  light  of  Oxford  lawns — 
and  again  I  hear  the  bells,  reminding  me  of  the  familiar 
Oxford  hours. 

The  Poplar 

There  is  a  great  tree  in  Sussex,  whose  cloud  of  thin 
foliage  floats  high  in  the  summer  air.  The  thrush 
sings  in  it,  and  blackbirds,  who  fill  the  late,  decorative 
sunshine  with  a  shimmer  of  golden  sound.  There  the 
nightingale  finds  her  green  cloister;  and  on  those 
branches  sometimes,  like  a  great  fruit,  hangs  the  lemon- 
colored  Moon.  In  the  glare  of  August,  when  all  the 
world  is  faint  with  heat,  there  is  always  a  breeze 
in  those  cool  recesses,  always  a  noise,  like  the  noise  of 
water,  among  its  lightly-hung  leaves. 

But  the  owner  of  this  Tree  lives  in  London,  reading 
books. 


THE  FISH  REPORTER 
By  Robert  Cortes  Holliday 

This  informal  commentary  on  the  picturesque  humors  of  trade 
journalism  is  typical  of  Mr.  Holliday's  great  skill  in  capturing 
the  actual  vibration  of  urban  life.  He  has  something  of  George 
Gissing's  taste  for  the  actuality  of  city  scenes  and  characters, 
with  rather  more  pungent  idiosyncrasy  in  his  manner  of  self- 
expression.  Careful  observers  of  the  art  of  writing  will  see 
how  much  shrewd  skill  there  is  in  the  apparently  unstudied  man- 
ner. One  of  Mr.  Holliday's  favorite  discussions  on  the  art  of 
writing  is  a  phrase  of  Booth  Tarkington's— "How  to  get  the 
ink  out  of  it."  In  other  words,  how  to  strip  away  mere  literary 
and  conscious  adornment,  and  to  get  down  to  a  translucent 
portraiture  of  life  itself  in  its  actual  contour  and  profile. 

We  are  told  that  Mr.  Holliday.  in  his  native  Indianapolis 
(where  he  was  born  in  t88o),  was  a  champion  bicycle  rider 
at  the  age  of  sixteen.  That  triumph,  however,  was  not  per- 
manently satisfying,  for  he  came  to  New  York  in  1899  to  study 
art;  lived  for  a  while,  precariously,  as  an  illustrator;  worked  for 
several  years  as  a  bookseller  in  Charles  Scribner's  retail  store, 
and  passed  through  all  sorts  of  curious  jobs  on  Grub  Street, 
arnong  others  book  reviewer  on  the  Tribune  and  Times.  He  was 
editor  of  The  Bookman  after  that  magazine  was  taken  over  by 
the  George  H.  Doran  Company,  and  retired  to  the  genteel  dig- 
nity of  "contributing  editor"  in  1920,  to  obtain  leisure  for  more 
writing  of  his  own. 

Mr.  Holliday  has  the  genuine  gift  of  the  personal  essay,  mel- 
low, fluent,  and  pleasantly  eccentric.  His  Walking-Stick  Papers, 
Broome  Street  Straws,  Turns  about  Tozvn  and  Peeps  at  People 
have  that  charming  rambling  humor  that  descends  to  him  from 
his  masters  in  this  art,  Hazlitt  and  Thackeray.  When  Mr.  Hol- 
liday was  racking  his  wits  for  a  title  for  Men  and  Books  and 
Cities  (that  odd  Borrovian  chronicle  of  his  mind,  body  and 
digestion  on  tour  across  the  continent)  I  suggested  The  Odyssey 
of  an  Oddity.  He  deprecated  this;  but  I  still  think  it  would  have 
been  a  good  title,  because  strictly  true. 

Men  of  genius,  blown  by  the  winds  of  chance,  have 
been,  now  and  then,  mariners,  bar-keeps,  schoolmasters, 

242 


The  Fish  Reporter  243 

soldiers,  politicians,  clergymen,  and  what  not.  And 
from  these  pursuits  have  they  sucked  the  essence  of 
yams  and  in  the  setting  of  these  activities  found  a 
flavor  to  stir  and  to  charm  hearts  untold.  Now,  it  is 
a  thousand  pities  that  no  man  of  genius  has  ever  been 
a  fish  reporter.  Thus  has  the  world  lost  great  literary 
treasure,  as  it  is  highly  probable  that  there  is  not 
under  the  sun  any  prospect  so  filled  with  the  scents  and 
colors  of  story  as  that  presented  by  the  commerce  in 
fish. 

Take  whale  oil.  Take  the  funny  old  buildings  on 
Front  Street,  out  of  paintings,  I  declare,  by  Howard 
Pyle,  where  the  large  merchants  in  whale  oil  are. 
Take  salt  fish.  Do  you  know  the  oldest  salt-fish  house 
in  America,  down  by  Coenties  Slip  ?  Ah !  you  should. 
The  ghost  of  old  Long  John  Silver,  I  suspect,  smokes 
an  occasional  pipe  in  that  old  place.  And  many  are 
the  times  I've  seen  the  slim  shade  of  young  Jim 
Hawkins  come  running  out.  Take  Labrador  cod  for 
export  to  the  Mediterranean  lands  or  to  Porto  Rico 
via  New  York.  Take  herrings  brought  to  this  port 
from  Iceland,  from  Holland,  and  from  Scotland; 
mackerel  from  Ireland,  from  the  Magdalen  Islands, 
and  from  Cape  Breton;  crabmeat  from  Japan;  fish- 
balls  from  Scandinavia;  sardines  from  Norway  and 
from  France ;  caviar  from  Russia ;  shrimp  which  comes 
from  Florida,  Mississippi,  and  Georgia,  or  salmon 


244  Robert  Cortes  Holliday 

from  Alaska,  and  Puget  Sound,  and  the  Columbia 
River. 

Take  the  obituaries  of  fishermen.  *lii  his  prime,  it 
is  said,  there  was  not  a  better  skipper  in  the  Gloucester 
fishing  fleet.'*  Take  disasters  to  schooners,  smacks, 
and  trawlers.  "The  crew  were  landed,  but  lost  all 
their  belongings.'*  New  vessels,  sales,  etc.  *'The  seal- 
ing schooner  Tillie  B.,  whose  career  in  the  South  Seas 
is  well  known,  is  reported  to  have  been  sold  to  a  mov- 
ing-picture firm."  Sponges  from  the  Caribbean  Sea 
and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  "To  most  people,  familiar 
only  with  the  sponges  of  the  shops,  the  animal  as  it 
comes  from  the  sea  would  be  rather  unrecognizable." 
Why,  take  anything  you  please!  It  is  such  stuff  as 
stories  are.  And  as  you  eat  your  fish  from  the  store 
how  little  do  you  reck  of  the  glamor  of  what  you  are 
doing ! 

However,  as  it  seems  to  me  unlikely  that  a  man  of 
genius  will  be  a  fish  reporter  shortly  I  will  myself  do 
the  best  I  can  to  paint  the  tapestry  of  the  scenes  of  his 
calling.  The  advertisement  in  the  newspaper  read : 
"Wanted — Reporter  for  weekly  trade  paper."  Many 
called,  but  I  was  chosen.  Though,  doubtless,  no  man 
living  knew  less  about  fish  than  I. 

The  news  stands  are  each  like  a  fair,  so  laden  are 
they  with  magazines  in  bright  colors.  It  would  seem 
almost  as  if  there  were  a  different  magazine  for  every 


The  Fish  Reporter  245 

few  hundred  and  seven-tenth  person,  as  the  statistics 
put  these  ^natters.  And  yet,  it  seems,  there  is  a  vast, 
a  very  vast,  periodical  literature  of  which  we,  that  is, 
magazine  readers  in  general,  know  nothing  whatever. 
There  is,  for  one,  that  fine,  old,  standard  publication, 
Barrel  and  Box,  devoted  to  the  subjects  and  the  in- 
terests of  the  coopering  industry;  there  is  too.  The 
Dried  Fruit  Packer  and  Western  Canner,  as  alert  a 
magazine  as  one  could  wish — in  its  kind;  and  from 
the  home  of  classic  American  literature  comes  The 
'New  England  Tradesman  and  Grocer.  And  so  on.  At 
the  place  alone  where  we  went  to  press  twenty-seven 
trade  journals  were  printed  every  week,  from  one  for 
butchers  to  one  for  bankers. 

The  Fish  Industries  Gazette — Ah,  yes!  For  some 
reason  not  clear  (though  it  is  an  engaging  thing,  I 
think)  the  word  "gazette"  is  the  great  word  among 
the  titles  of  trade  journals.  There  are  The  Jewellers' 
Gazette  and  The  Women's  Wear  Gazette  and  The 
Poulterers'  Gazette  (of  London),  and  The  Maritime 
Gazette  (of  Halifax),  and  other  gazettes  quite  without 
number.  This  word  "gazette"  makes  its  appeal,  too, 
curiously  enough,  to  those  who  christen  country 
papers;  and  trade  journals  have  much  of  the  intimate 
charm  of  country  papers.  The  "trade"  in  each  case  is 
a  kind  of  neighborly  community,  separated  in  its  parts 
by  space,  but  joined  in  unity  of  sympathy.     "Per- 


246  Robert  Cortes  Hoi  It  Jay 

sonals"  are  a  vital  feature  of  trade  papers.  "Walter 
Conner,  who  for  some  time  has  conducted  a  bakery 
and  fish  market  at  Hudson,  N.  Y.,  has  removed  to 
Fort  Edward,  leaving  his  brother  Ed  in  charge  at  the 
Hudson  place  of  business." 

The  Fish  Industries  Gazette,  as  I  say,  was  one  of 
several  in  its  field,  in  friendly  rivalry  with  The  Oyster 
Trade  and  Fisherman  and  The  Pacific  Fisheries.  It 
comprised  two  departments :  the  fresh  fish  and  oyster 
department,  and  myself.  I  was,  as  an  editorial  an- 
nouncement said  at  the  beginning  of  my  tenure  of 
office,  a  "reorganization  of  our  salt,  smoked,  and 
pickled  fish  department."  The  delectable,  mellow  spirit 
of  the  country  paper,  so  removed  from  the  crash  and 
whirr  of  metropolitan  journalism,  rested  in  this,  too, 
that  upon  the  Gazette  I  did  practically  everything  on 
the  paper  except  the  linotyping.  Reporter,  editorial 
writer,  exchange  editor,  make-up  man,  proof-reader, 
correspondent,  advertisement  solicitor,  was  I. 

As  exchange  editor,  did  I  read  all  the  papers  in  the 
English  language  in  eager  search  of  fish  news.  And 
while  you  are  about  the  matter,  just  find  me  a  finer  bit 
of  literary  style  evoking  the  romance  of  the  vast 
wastes  of  the  moving  sea,  in  Stevenson,  Defoe,  any- 
where you  please,  than  such  a  news  item  as  this: 
"Capt.  Ezra  Pound,  of  the  bark  Elnora,  of  Salem, 
Mass.,  spoke  a  lonely  vessel  in  latitude  this  and  longi- 


The  Fish  Reporter  247 

tude  that,  September  8.  She  proved  to  be  the  whaler 
Wanderer,  and  her  captain  said  that  she  had  been  nine 
months  at  sea,  that  all  on  board  were  well,  and  that 
he  had  stocked  so  many  barrels  of  whale  oil.'* 

As  exchange  editor  was  it  my  business  to  peruse  re- 
ports from  Eastport,  Maine,  to  the  effect  that  one  of 
the  worst  storms  in  recent  years  had  destroyed  large 
numbers  of  the  sardine  weirs  there.  To  seek  fish 
recipes,  of  such  savory  sound  as  those  for  "broiled 
redsnapper,"  "shrimps  bordelaise,"  and  "baked  fish 
croquettes.'*  To  follow  fishing  conditions  in  the  North 
Sea  occasioned  by  the  Great  War.  To  hunt  down  jokes 
of  piscatory  humor.  "The  man  who  drinks  like  a  fish 
does  not  take  kindly  to  water. — Exchange.*'  To  find 
other  "fillers"  in  the  consular  reports  and  elsewhere: 
"Fish  culture  in  India,"  "1800  Miles  in  a  Dory," 
"Chinese  Carp  for  the  Philippines,"  "Americans  as 
Fish  Eaters."  And,  to  use  a  favorite  term  of  trade 
papers,  "etc.,  etc."  Then  to  "paste  up"  the  winnowed 
fruits  of  this  beguiling  research. 

As  editorial  writer,  to  discuss  the  report  of  the 
commission  recently  sent  by  congress  to  the  Pribilof 
Islands,  Alaska,  to  report  on  the  condition  of  our  na- 
tional herd  of  fur  seals ;  to  discuss  the  official  interpre- 
tation here  of  the  Government  ruling  on  what  consti- 
tutes "boneless"  codfish;  to  consider  the  campaign  in 
Canada  to  promote  there  a  more  popular  consumption 


248  Robert  Cortex  Holliday 

of  fish,  and  to  brightly  remark  h  propos  of  this  that 
"a.  fish  a  day  keeps  the  doctor  away" ;  to  review  the 
current  issue  of  The  Journal  of  the  Fisheries  Society 
of  Japan,  containing  leading  articles  on  ''Are  Fishing 
Motor  Boats  Able  to  Encourage  in  Our  Country"  and 
"Fisherman  the  Late  Mr.  H.  Yamaguchi  Well 
Known";  to  combat  the  prejudice  against  dogfish  as 
food,  a  prejudice  like  that  against  eels,  in  some  quarters 
eyed  askance  as  "calling  cousins  with  the  great  sea- 
serpent,"  as  Juvenal  says ;  to  call  attention  to  the  doom 
of  one  of  the  most  picturesque  monuments  in  the  story 
of  fish,  the  passing  of  the  pleasant  and  celebrated  old 
Trafalgar  Hotel  at  Greenwich,  near  London,  scene  of 
the  famous  Ministerial  white-bait  dinners  of  the  days 
of  Pitt;  to  make  a  jest  on  an  exciting  idea  suggested 
by  some  medical  man  that  some  of  the  features  of  a 
Ritz-Carlton  Hotel,  that  is,  baths,  be  introduced  into 
the  fo'c's'les  of  Grand  Banks  fishing  vessels;  to  keep 
an  eye  on  the  activities  of  our  Bureau  of  Fisheries ;  to 
hymn  a  praise  to  the  monumental  new  Fish  Pier  at 
Boston;  to  glance  at  conditions  at  the  premier  fish 
market  of  the  world.  Billingsgate;  to  herald  the  fish 
display  at  the  Canadian  National  Exhibition  at 
Toronto,  and,  indeed,  etc.,  and  again  etc. 

As  general  editorial  roustabout,  to  find  each  week  a 
"leader,"  a  translation,  say,  from  In  Allgemeine  Fish- 
cherei'Zeitung,  or  Economic  Circular  No.  10,  "Mus- 


The  Fish  Reporter  249 

sels  in  the  Tributaries  of  the  Missouri,"  or  the  last 
biennial  report  of  the  Superintendent  of  Fisheries  of 
Wisconsin,  or  a  scientific  paper  on  "The  Porpoise  in 
Captivity''  reprinted  by  permission  of  Zoologica,  of 
the  New  York  Zoological  Society.  To  find  each  week 
for  reprint  a  poem  appropriate  in  sentiment  to  the  feel- 
ing of  the  paper.  One  of  the  "Salt  Water  Ballads" 
would  do,  or  John  Masefield  singing  of  "the  whale's 
way,"  or  "Down  to  the  white  dipping  sails" ;  or  Rupert 
Brooke :  "And  in  that  heaven  of  all  their  wish.  There 
shall  be  no  more  land,  say  fish" ;  or  a  "weather  rhyme" 
about  "mackerel  skies,"  when  "you're  sure  to  get  a 
fishing  day";  or  something  from  the  New  York  Sun 
about  "the  lobster  pots  of  Maine";  or  Oliver  Herford, 
in  the  Century,  "To  a  Goldfish";  or,  best  of  all,  an  old 
song  of  fishing  ways  of  other  days. 

And  to  compile  from  the  New  York  Journal  of  Contr 
merce  better  poetry  than  any  of  this,  tables,  beautiful 
tables  of  "imports  into  New  York":  "Oct.  15. — ' 
From  Bordeaux,  225  cs.  cuttlefish  bone;  Copenhagen, 
173  pkgs.  fish;  Liverpool,  969  bbls.  herrings,  10  walrus 
hides,  2,000  bags  salt;  La  Guayra,  6  cs.  fish  sounds; 
Belize,  9  bbls.  sponges;  Rotterdam,  7  pkgs.  seaweed, 
9,000  kegs  herrings;  Barcelona,  235  cs.  sardines; 
Bocas  Del  Toro,  5  cs.  turtle  shells;  Genoa,  3  boxes 
corals;  Tampico,  2  pkgs.  sponges;  Halifax,  i  cs.  seal 
skins,  35  bbls.  cod  liver  oil,  215  cs.  lobsters,  490  bbls. 


250  Robert  Cortes  Holliday 

codfish;  Akureyri,  4,150  bbls.  salted  herrings,"  and 
much  more.  Beautiful  tables  of  "exports  from  New 
York.''  *To  Australia"  (cleared  Sep.  i) ;  "to  Argen- 
tina";— Haiti,  Jamaica,  Guatemala,  Scotland,  Salva- 
dor, Santo  Domingo,  England,  and  to  places  many 
more.  And  many  other  gorgeous  tables,  too.  "Fish- 
ing vessels  at  New  York,"  for  one,  listing  the  "trips" 
brought  into  this  port  by  the  Stranger,  the  Sarah 
O'Neal,  the  Nourmahal,  a  farrago  of  charming  sounds, 
and  a  valuable  tale  of  facts. 

As  make-up  man,  of  course,  so  to  "dress"  the  paper 
that  the  "markets,"  Oporto,  Trinidad,  Porto  Rico, 
Demerara,  Havana,  would  be  together;  that  "Nova 
Scotia  Notes" — "Weather  conditions  for  curing  have 
been  more  favorable  since  October  set  in" — would  fol- 
low "Halifax  Fish  Market" — "Last  week's  arrivals 
were:  Oct.  13,  schr.  Hattie  Loring,  960  quintals," 
etc.— that  "Pacific  Coast  Notes" — "The  tug  Tatoosh 
will  perform  the  service  for  the  Seattle  salmon  packers 
of  towing  a  vessel  from  Seattle  to  this  port  via  the 
Panama  Canal" — would  follow  "Canned  Salmon"; 
that  shellfish  matter  would  be  in  one  place ;  reports  of 
saltfish  where  such  should  be ;  that  the  weekly  tale  of 
the  canned  fish  trade  politically  embraced  the  canned 
fish  advertising;  and  so  on  and  so  on. 

Finest  of  all,  as  reporter,  to  go  where  the  fish  re- 
porter goes.     There  the  sight-seeing  cars  never  find 


The  Fish  Reporter  251 

their  way ;  the  hurried  commuter  has  not  his  path,  nor 
knows  of  these  things  at  all ;  and  there  that  racy  char- 
acter who,  voicing  a  multitude,  declares  that  he  would 
rather  be  a  lamp  post  on  Broadway  than  Mayor  of  St. 
Louis,  goes  not  for  to  see.  Up  lower  Greenwich  Street 
the  fish  reporter  goes,  along  an  eerie,  dark,  and  nar- 
row way,  beneath  a  strange,  thundering  roof,  the 
"L"  overhead.  He  threads  his  way  amid  seemingly 
chaotic,  architectural  piles  of  boxes,  of  barrels,  crates, 
casks,  kegs,  and  bulging  bags ;  roundabout  many  great 
fetlocked  draught  horses,  frequently  standing  or 
plunging  upon  the  sidewalk,  and  attached  to  many 
huge  trucks  and  wagons ;  and  much  of  the  time  in  the 
street  he  is  compelled  to  go,  finding  the  side  walks  too 
congested  with  the  traffic  of  commerce  to  admit  of  his 
passing  there. 

You  probably  eat  butter,  and  eggs,  and  cheese.  Then 
you  would  delight  in  Greenwich  Street.  You  could 
feast  your  highly  creditable  appetite  for  these  excel- 
lent things  for  very  nearly  a  solid  mile  upon  the  signs 
of  "wholesale  dealers  and  commission  merchants"  in 
^hem.  The  letter  press,  as  you  might  say,  of  the  fish 
reporter's  walk  is  a  noble  paean  to  the  earth's  glorious 
yield  for  the  joyous  sustenance  of  man.  For  these 
princely  merchants'  signs  sing  of  opulent  stores  of 
olive  oil,  of  sausages,  beans,  soups,  extracts,  and  spices, 
sugar,  Spanish,  Bermuda,  and  Havana  onions,  "fine" 


252  Robert  Cortes  Holliday 

apples,  teas,  coffee,  rice,  chocolates,  dried  fruits  and 
raisins,  and  of  loaves  and  of  fishes,  and  of  '*fish  pro- 
ducts." Lo !  dark  and  dirty  and  thundering  Greenwich 
Street  is  to-day's  translation  of  the  Garden  of  Eden. 

Here  is  a  great  house  whose  sole  vocation  is  the  im- 
portation of  caviar  for  barter  here.  Caviar  from 
over-seas  now  comes,  when  it  comes  at  all,  mainly  by 
the  way  of  Archangel,  recently  put  on  the  map,  for 
most  of  us,  by  the  war.  The  fish  reporter  is  told,  how- 
ever, if  it  be  summer,  that  there  cannot  be  much  doing 
in  the  way  of  caviar  until  fall,  "when  the  spoonbill 
start  coming  in."  And  on  he  goes  to  a  great  saltfish 
house,  where  many  men  in  salt-stained  garments  are 
running  about,  their  arms  laden  with  large  fiat  objects, 
of  sharp  and  jagged  edge,  which  resemble  dried  and 
crackling  hides  of  some  animal  curiously  like  a  huge 
fish;  and  numerous  others  of  ''the  same"  are  trundling 
round  wheelbarrow-like  trucks  likewise  so  laden. 
Where  stacks  of  these  hides  stand  on  their  tails  against 
the  walls,  and  goodness  knows  how  many  big  boxes 
are,  containing,  as  those  open  show,  beautifully  soft, 
thick,  cream-colored  slabs,  which  is  fish.  And  where 
still  other  men,  in  overalls  stained  like  a  painter's 
palette,  are  knocking  off  the  heads  of  casks  and  dipping 
out  of  brine  still  other  kinds  of  fish  for  inspection. 

Here  it  is  said  by  the  head  of  the  house,  by  the 

stove   (it  is  chill  weather}  in  his  ofBce  like  a  ship- 

( 


The  Fish  Reporter  253 

master's  cabin :  "Strong  market  on  foreign  mackerel. 
Mines  hinder  Norway  catch.  Advices  from  abroad  re- 
port that  German  resources  continue  to  purchase  all 
available  supplies  from  the  Norwegian  fishermen.  No 
Irish  of  any  account.  Recent  shipment  sold  on  the 
deck  at  high  prices.  Fair  demand  from  the  Middle 
West." 

So,  by  stages,  on  up  to  turn  into  North  Moore 
Street,  looking  down  a  narrow  lane  between  two  long 
bristling  rows  of  wagons  pointed  out  from  the  curbs, 
to  the  facades  of  the  North  River  docks  at  the  bottom, 
vrith  the  tops  of  the  buff  funnels  of  ocean  liners,  and 
Whistleranean  silhouettes  of  derricks,  rising  beyond. 
Hereabout  are  more  importers,  exporters,  and  "pro- 
ducers" of  fish,  famous  in  their  calling  beyond  the 
celebrities  of  popular  publicity.  And  he  that  has  official 
entree  may  learn,  by  mounting  dusky  stairs,  half- 
ladder  and  half-stair,  and  by  passing  through  low- 
ceilinged  chambers  freighted  with  many  barrels,  to  the 
sanctums  of  the  fish  lords,  what's  doing  in  the  foreign 
herring  way,  and  get  the  current  market  quotations,  at 
present  sky-high,  and  hear  that  the  American  shore 
mackerel  catch  is  very  fine  stock. 

Then  roundabout,  with  a  step  into  the  broad  vista  of 
homely  Washington  Street,  and  a  turn  through  Frank- 
lin Street,  where  is  the  man  decorated  by  the  Imperial 
Japanese  Government  with  a  gold  medal,  if  he  should 


254  Robert  Cortes  Holliday 

care  to  wear  it,  for  having  distinguished  himself  in 
the  development  of  commerce  in  the  marine  products 
of  Japan,  back  to  Hudson  Street.  An  authentic  rail- 
road is  one  of  the  spectacular  features  of  Hudson 
Street. 

Here  down  the  middle  of  the  way  are  endless  trains, 
stopping,  starting,  crashing,  laden  to  their  ears  with 
freight,  doubtless  all  to  eat.  Tourists  should  come 
from  very  far  to  view  Hudson  Street.  Here  is  a  spec- 
tacle as  fascinating,  as  awe-inspiring,  as  extraordinary 
as  any  in  the  world.  From  dawn  until  darkness  falls, 
hour  after  hour,  along  Hudson  Street  slowly,  steadily 
moves  a  mighty  procession  of  great  trucks.  One 
would  not  suppose  there  were  so  many  trucks  on  the 
face  of  the  earth.  It  is  a  glorious  sight,  and  any  man 
whose  soul  is  not  dead  should  jump  with  joy  to  see  it. 
And  the  thunder  of  them  altogether  as  they  bang  over 
the  stones  is  like  the  music  of  the  spheres. 

There  is  on  Hudson  Street  a  tall  handsome  building 
where  the  fish  reporter  goes,  which  should  be  enjoyed 
in  this  way :  Up  in  the  lift  you  go  to  the  top,  and  then 
you  walk  down,  smacking  your  lips.  For  all  the  doors 
in  that  building  are  brimming  with  poetry.  And  the 
tune  of  it  goes  like  this:  "Toasted  Com-FIake  Co.," 
"Seaboard  Rice,"  "Chili  Products,"  "Red  Bloom 
Grape  Juice  Sales  Office,"  "Porto  Rico  and  Singapore 
Pineapple  Co.,"  "Sunnyland*  Foodstuffs,"  "Importers 


The  Fish  Reporter  ^55 

of  Fruit  Pulps,  Pimentos/'  "Sole  Agents  U.  S.  A. 
Italian  Salad  Oil,"  "Raisin  Growers,"  "Log  Cabin 
Syrups,"  "Jobbers  in  Beans,  Peas,"  "Chocolate  and 
Cocoa  Preparations,"  "Ohio  Evaporated  Milk  Co.," 
"Bernese  Alps  and  Holland  Condensed  Milk  Co.," 
"Brazilian  Nuts  Co.,"  "Brokers  Pacific  Coast  Salmon," 
"California  Tuna  Co.,"  and  thus  on  and  on. 

The  fish  reporter  crosses  the  street  to  see  the  head  of 
the  Sardine  Trust,  who  has  just  thrown  the  market 
into  excitement  by  a  heavy  cut  in  prices  of  last  year's 
pack.  Thence,  pausing  to  refresh  himself  by  the  way 
at  a  sign  "Agency  for  Reims  Champagne  and  Moselle 
Wines — Bordeaux  Clarets  and  Sauternes,"  over  tQ 
Broadway  to  interview  the  most  august  persons  of  all, 
dealers  in  fertilizer,  "fish  scrap."  These  mighty 
gentlemen  live,  when  at  business,  in  palatial  suites  of 
offices  constructed  of  marble  and  fi«e  woods  and  laid 
with  rich  rugs.  The  reporter  is  relayed  into  the  inner- 
most sanctum  by  a  succession  of  richly  clothed  at- 
tendants. And  he  learns,  it  may  be,  that  fishing  in 
Chesapeake  Bay  is  so  poor  that  some  of  the  "fish  fac- 
tories" may  decide  to  shut  down.  Acid  phosphate,  it 
is  said,  is  ruling  at  $13  f.o.b.  Baltimore. 

And  so  the  fish  reporter  enters  upon  the  last  lap  of 
his  rounds.  Through,  perhaps,  the  narrow,  crooked 
lane  of  Pine  Street  he  passes,  to  come  out  at  length 
upon  a  scene  set  for  a  sea  tale.    Here  would  a  lad,  heir 


256  Robert  Cortes  Holliday 

to  vast  estates  in  Virginia,  be  kidnapped  and  smuggled 
aboard  to  be  sold  a  slave  in  Africa.  This  is  Front 
Street.  A  white  ship  lies  at  the  foot  of  it.  Cranes 
rise  at  her  side.  Tugs,  belching  smoke,  bob  beyond. 
All  about  are  ancient  warehouses,  redolent  of  the 
Thames,  with  steep  roofs  and  sometimes  stairs  outside, 
and  with  tall  shutters,  a  crescent-shaped  hole  in  each. 
There  is  a  dealer  in  weather-vanes.  Other  things  dealt 
in  hereabout  are  these :  chronometers,  ''nautical  instru- 
ments," wax  gums,  cordage  and  twine,  marine  paints, 
cotton  wool  and  waste,  turpentine,  oils,  greases,  and 
rosin.  Queer  old  taverns,  public  houses,  are  here,  too. 
Why  do  not  their  windows  rattle  with  a  *'Yo,  ho,  ho"  ? 
There  is  an  old,  old  house  whose  business  has  been 
fish  oil  within  the  memory  of  men.  And  here  is  an- 
other. Next,  through  Water  Street,  one  comes  in 
search  of  the  last  word  on  salt  fish.  Now  the  air  is 
filled  with  gorgeous  smell  of  roasting  coffee.  Tea, 
coffee,  sugar,  rice,  spices,  bags  and  bagging  here  have 
their  home.  And  there  are  haughty  bonded  ware- 
houses filled  with  fine  liquors.  From  his  white  cabin 
at  the  top  of  a  venerable  structure  comes  the  dean  of 
the  saltfish  business.  "Export  trade  fair,"  he  says; 
"good  demand  from  South  America." 


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